Month: April 2003

  • Mishmosh


    The new Harry Potter DVD will be out in a couple of days.  I wish I could afford to buy it, so I could see it sooner.  It takes a month or two for new releases to make it to Camp Caswell, the little campground, laundromat and general store where we rent our videos.  After they get it, on some lucky Tuesday or Thursday (half price rental days), I’ll get to see Chamber of Secrets.


    Years ago, reading the book, I fell in love with little Dobby the house elf.  Not only is he a sweet, valiant, sensitive hero, but Mary GrandPre’s illustrations are adorable.


    The CG anime version, at least in the stills I’ve seen, has lost a bit of that cuteness and charm.  I’ll reserve judgment on how well the character holds up onscreen until I’ve seen it.  He’s still sorta appealing, isn’t he?


    I owe Doug a big one over Harry Potter.  He told me about the first book and I didn’t respond.  I’d had my fill of kids’ books when he was little.  Then he brought home a later book from the school library and I was hooked.  I’ve turned several of my adult friends on to the series, against some resistance I must say.  Their eventual appreciation was worth the trouble.



    The library book I’m reading now, The Devil in the White City, is a very rare treat:  a factual page-turner.  It is about the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, its director of works Daniel Burnham, and serial murderer Herman Mudgett, AKA H.H.Holmes MD, who was active in Chicago at the time.  I’ve been missing sleep for this one, can’t put it down until I doze off and it falls on my chest. 





    Peacefire’s latest way to fight internet censorship, a circumventor, is available for beta testing.


    There’s local Talkeetna color, local indie music, pictures, chat and lots more at Whole Wheat Radio.


    Yesterday as I was doing a tedious and tiring task (for a weakling like me with chronic fatigue) in the driveway, pulling the metal studs from an old set of snow tires–saved $78 that way–I listened to the drumming and occasional series of notes from a woodpecker.

    After I finished the job, I sat still and watched the trees until I caught sight of her:  a female northern three-toed woodpecker. 


    Last summer, some extraordinarily loud drumming drew me out of the house, and I found one that looked just like this one, pecking for bugs in the wood of the old cabin beside our trailer.  It really resonated.  I’ve been wondering if it’s the same bird I saw yesterday.


    We put out seeds and crumbs for birds all winter here.  The main customers are chickadees and “camp robbers”: Canadian gray jays.


    This time of year, when the summer birds come back, it is as sweet and cheering to me as hearing the southbound geese in autumn is melancholy.


    Welcome back, birds.


    .


    .


    .

  • Greyfox’s shiny new red used car is back!


    (photo note:  The shot below, of Greyfox’s car, was taken today, just moments ago, so that’s how April looks in our neighborhood.  My new profile photo was taken by Doug on our last water run.  I was smiling a lot during that shoot, but the kid managed to miss all the smiles and got a good picture of the sun-scowl.  I really wasn’t in pain or pissed off, as it appears.  It is, however, a more representative sample of my normal expression than any smiley face would be.  People are always telling me to smile when I thought I was already smiling.)


    In case you missed it, back in the middle of January, my crazy Old Fart went absolutely! freakin’! nuts! over a car he found parked next to a second hand store in Willow.  He wheeled and he dealed and scraped up all the cash he could, talked me out of a couple of hundred from my secret stash, and persuaded the junk dealer to accept some knives as part of the deal.


    The body was scratched and banged up, windshield cracked, a few trim strips and the frame of one tail light were dangling loose, but that’s just cosmetic stuff, no big deal to me.  Jack, the young man who sold the car (Jack’s mom, an old friend of mine, insists that Jack and his wife Melody are just kids and should be excused on that account, but age makes them adults and being in business implies some legal responsibility, so to me they are a man and woman), told Greyfox that the car had a worn or bent tie rod that needed replacing, which accounted for the shimmy.  He offered to do the installation of the new tie rod if Greyfox bought one.


    Greyfox told me that our friend Sam, who is a competent mechanic,  had “looked at” the car and said it looked good.  He neglected to specify that Sam had seen the car parked there as he drove by and thought the body damage wasn’t too bad.  I foolishly thought he meant that Sam had checked the car out mechanically.  Silly me.  I really should have known that Greyfox cares intensely about appearances and blanks out his mind on all the internal details that are such a mystery to him.  Sam has been teaching him some mechanical skills, and Greyfox can now replace a burned out headlamp.


    Anyway, we bought the junker and it came with an invalid title.  When that little fact was revealed I came unglued.  I confronted Greyfox for not heeding my repeated warnings about the car, and in the midst of his contrition, he revealed a few unrelated things he had been trying to keep from me.  That’s how it goes when you start spilling your guts:  a lot of stuff comes out.   I knew he had resumed smoking cigarettes.  Crap!  I could smell the Kools on him and I had told him so.  But while we were hashing out the car title and his scornful disregard of my cautions, he told me that he had been purposely avoiding touching or hugging me to KEEP ME from smelling it–after I had told him I could smell him from across the room.


    I am so allergic to tobacco smoke that entering a room where there’s smoke residue on furniture and drapes, or getting close to a smoker with it in hair and clothing, makes me cough.  When there’s cigar or cigarette smoke in the air, I have to use my “rescue” asthma inhaler.  This is in addition to my regular daily asthma meds.  When I go to town, to prepare for the onslaught of smoke and perfume and other chemicals, I take antihistamines.  The rescue inhaler is contraindicated for anyone with my medical history and the antihistamines likewise, but that risk is more acceptable than the alternative.  Not smoking has always been one of the conditions I placed on Greyfox’s sharing space with me.


    My love is unconditional, but dammit I’m not going to quietly allow anyone to endanger my life and health in my own home–and it is MINE, not his.  I am quite willing to love the man from afar but he won’t go away and for much of the twelve years we’ve been together he has tried to sneak smokes.  I always know, how could I not under the circumstances?  That night that he spilled his guts when I was already furious over the disrespect and the extravagant expenditure for a defective vehicle and invalid title, after he went to bed, I vented.  I sat here dripping tears on the keys and pounded out my feelings.


    Later on, I felt it appropriate to write a response to the comments I’d gotten.  A couple of weeks later, when we had gotten the title and registered the junker in our names, I blogged about that.  Then months passed.  Charley (Doug’s dad, my ex, my best friend), on one of his visits soon after Greyfox brought the car home, had expressed some interest and I had told him, “Don’t ask.”  Later on, urged by a healthy curiosity, he had again wondered aloud what the story was on that vehicle that had been parked in our driveway for weeks.


    By then I had cooled sufficiently to be able to explain the situation and tell him that Greyfox had taken the car in and had a mechanic look it over and give him an estimate on repairs.  According to the man at Midas, the full thing would be about $2,000, but it could be safely road worthy for about half that.  It had come as no surprise at all to me that there was nothing wrong with the tie rod, which Jack had said was the only mechanical problem.  The big thing making it unsafe to drive was a cracked axle, and there were also several lesser problems including brakes.  I had refused to drive the thing and told Doug and Greyfox that I strongly objected to my kid’s riding in it as well.


    Next time I saw Charley, he said that our neighbor Ray was willing to install a new axle.  Knowing that Ray was a good mechanic and cheap, I strongly suggested to Greyfox that he let Ray take a look at his car.  Greyfox had been using my car for his business and was hoping to make enough money that way to get his car fixed.  It wasn’t working out because business is really sucky this year.  Going back and forth to town to set up the stand was costing more than he was making.  The secret stash of money from last summer was gone, our debts were piling up–we live this way:  seasonal income, credit to get us through the winter and then we pay off last winter’s living expenses when money starts coming in again as tourists return.  Not surprisingly, there aren’t many tourists this year.  But I’m kinda anxious to get my wheels back before Greyfox totally trashes my beloved Streak Subaru.


    Ray and Charley came over one day recently and took the car out for a diagnostic drive.  Noises from one wheel made Ray think it was a bad bearing, but when he took it apart that turned out to be the metal-on-metal sound of a brake drum being scored.  We had enough credit left to get the parts.  Ray replaced axle and brakes and brought the car back yesterday.  He only wanted $150 for his labor, and–wonder of wonders–Charley paid it. 


    I had helped Charley during the winter, filing for his Social Security retirement online, using my credit card to pay for a copy of his birth certificate, filling out the forms at his direction, doing a lot of things that Charley finds extremely trying and tedious.  He had gotten his first SS payment and, knowing that I had no cash, he paid Ray.


    The car is still not roadworthy.  There are a couple of tires with tread separating, and it needs alignment badly, something Ray’s not equipped to do.  Fortunately, some of our friends at the motel up on the highway near here have opened a tire shop as a sideline–in these times, with Alaska’s economy in one of its periodic busts between booms, we all need a sideline or two.  If they have some cheap but serviceable used tires that will fit, Greyfox will have them installed.  If not, we have some snow tires we can put on there long enough, maybe, to make enough money to buy new tires.  Then Greyfox can maybe drive the thing the fifty miles or so to someone who can do the alignment.  And then Streak will be mine, all mine, again… and I can start cleaning Greyfox’s mess out of him.

  • Updated for Daylight Saving Time (see end)


    This quote has been over at the bottom of my left module for months:



    “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers divine. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it may contradict everything you said today. ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood?’–is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood….”
    –from Self-Reliance
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson—


    I’ve always liked it because of its closing sentiments, the bit about being great and misunderstood.   Inconsistency has never seemed to me to be a virtue, but I can see the virtue in being able to change one’s mind when a situation changes or one gets a new perspective on it.


    One of the things about living with people, interacting with others, that I’ve never enjoyed and sometimes resented, is the necessity for explaining myself, my statements and my motivations.  If anything ever drives me to become a true hermit, that will be part of it.  It isn’t that I don’t think about that stuff.  Introspection is my specialty.  Articulation is a different matter.  Language often falls short of expressing what I am thinking.  Duality, either/or, is built into our language and I’m a both/and thinker.  Trying to express that can be confusing to speaker and hearer alike.


    I woke this morning with a new perspective.  That came as no surprise.  I had done a guided meditation yesterday afternoon.  It included suggestions designed to impel me, in a relaxed and open altered state of consciousness, to look at things I had been denying, and to bring to the forefront of my mind some things I might not have paid much attention to.  I had been attracted to that CD because I always wonder what’s in there that I’m not seeing.  [ecchhh!  This paragraph beautifully illustrates for me what I hate about trying to put things into words.  It doesn't say quite what I mean, and I don't know a better way to put it.]


    Things were going on here in the house when I finished the session, and I didn’t get a chance to reflect on and process the results immediately.  That happened overnight, in sleep as it often does.  I began to notice the changing perspective as I watched Meet the Press.  I’m still unable to adequately articulate what I think about what I saw and heard.  I could quite easily express one part of it or another, but not the gestalt, and gestalt it is.  Oh how I love to find words that work for me!


    Words for my newfound perspective are very hard to find.  I’ll be working on that as I go along, as I view things this new way.  What I can express is how I feel about it.  It feels fitting, appropriate, comfortable.  I’m a lot more at ease with myself, with my mind in this frame.  The view is broader, more inclusive.  I feel as if I have given myself permission to look at things a new way.  I feel enabled, empowered.  It feels okay.  I think I can get used to it





    Now, some words on an entirely different topic:

    What is so difficult about, “Spring forward; Fall back”??


    The time-shift to Daylight Time had escaped my notice until I shifted the mouse this morning and made the SETI@home screensaver go away.  Then Windows informed me that it had updated my clock.  I might have had a clue when I picked up the remote beside my bed and turned on the TV in time to catch Meet the Press.  I’m usually not awake that early.


    But I hadn’t looked at the clock, so I didn’t know what time it was until I got up and looked at the computer.  After Meet the Press, I tuned the TV to PBS for the Bookworm Bunch, and it was still showing the early-morning GED prep courses.  I wondered if someone at the station had forgotten to set their clock forward.


    Another hour passed before my toons came on, and then I realized that someone had turned the TV station’s clock back instead of forward.  It was 10:00 AM and I heard some sounds of movement from Greyfox’s room, so I went back to tell him about the latest friendly fire incident and David Bloom’s death.  I laughingly mentioned that someone at the PBS station had turned their clock back instead of forward.


    He looked startled and shot me a wordless question.  I told him yes, it’s “spring forward” time.  He started moving, alarmed that he was slugabed while time was awasting.  Talkeetna has been very short of tourist traffic, and he had decided to set up beside the road near Sears and Wal-Mart in Wasilla today.  It’s a long commute, but preferable to an absence of income closer to home. I saw him start to reset his wrist watch just before I turned and went to start breakfast.


    In the kitchen, the time change came up again.  He asked what time it was.  It was ten something.  He scowled, sputtered, and said, “…but… are you sure?  It should be eight!”  Then he went on to say, “Spring forward, Fall back, right?”  I agreed.  He paused, then he said, “Oh… it’s spring, isn’t it?”


     


  • Review:


    Red Dragon

    Thomas Harris is the kind of writer I want to be.  There are a lot of good writers in print who draw believable characters with depth and humanity.  Most writers will devote page after page to the development of a hero or a victim, while their bad guys are only cardboard cutouts, no heart and no soul. 


    I have known enough murderers in my life to know that they are some of the most complex and soulful people around.  Harris is one of the few writers who develops his “villains” as well as he does the protagonists, which is very well indeed.  He has created several “real” monsters in his books, as any fan of Hannibal Lecter knows.


    I read Red Dragon in the early eighties.  It set me off on one of the more interesting quests for knowledge in this lifetime.  His well-informed portrayals of serial killers and FBI profilers sent me to the books to study serial killers.  I had to know more about that phenomenon, to try and understand the inner workings of those minds.  After a couple of decades of study, I’ve virtually exhausted the available literature and satisfied much of my curiosity.


    When I first heard that Anthony Hopkins had agreed to play Lecter in a new movie version of Red Dragon, I was interested but not avidly.  I knew I’d watch the movie whenever Greyfox brought the video home, but I was in no great hurry for it. 


    He had already brought home the disappointing earlier movie taken from this book, Manhunter.  I didn’t expect too much more from a second try at it.  Manhunter was a police procedural, apparently heavily influenced by TV’s Miami Vice.  It was Will Graham’s story, not Francis Dolarhyde’s, which the book had been.


    Yesterday morning at the local general store, Greyfox says he was jittering with excitement at learning that they had gotten the Red Dragon DVD in.  He was enthusing over it to the owner and a customer.  When he said that Hannibal Lecter was his hero, he got some odd looks in response.  But that’s my Old Fart the ArmsMerchant.  He says Lecter, “knows his knives.”   Yeah, he does, and he also knows his cuisine.  One of my favorite props in Red Dragon is an original copy of Larousse Gastronomique, the bible of cookbooks.


    Hannibal Lecter was introduced to the world in the book Red Dragon.  His part of the book was little more than an introduction.  The movie, capitalizing on the character’s popularity, gives him a much greater role, filling in some of the cannibal’s background out of Hannibal and prefiguring his appearance in Silence of the Lambs.  Hopkins displays his superlative acting skill here.  Can the man DO less than wonderful work?  I don’t think so.


    Casting and production in Red Dragon are excellent.  There are many very good actors, even in very small parts.  Set design and cinematography are so good that nothing about them jumps out at a viewer.  That is just as it should be:  the play’s the thing, and production values should not take the viewer out of it.


    This film has many of the things I look for in a movie:  good writing (both in the book and in a screenplay that is extraordinarliy true to it), fine casting and acting, seamless editing, and full frontal male nudity.  That last is only a brief sequence, mostly backlit and in silhouette, but Ralph Fiennes’ dark pubic hair and dangly swinging genitals has turned out to be one of the most memorable scenes in the film.  So sue me.


    This movie got three thumbs up here.  That’s rare as can be, in this household of three people with very diverse tastes.  Doug, Greyfox and I all loved it.  We’ve long ago decided that having all three of us approve of ANYTHING is a resounding endorsement.  The gory business was, I think, handled just right.  Too much blood would have turned this into a horror move (which I hate and Greyfox loves).  Too little gore would have been sanitizing the violence, which I abhor.  This was a very well-done thriller. 


    See the movie.  Get the DVD and see all the extra features that go with it.  You won’t be sorry.

  • “Tie a yellow ribbon ’round the old oak tree.”

    Pre-emptive strike:Nobody
    has had the temerity to openly question my patriotism while I’ve been
    criticizing our unelected regime’s warmongering.  Even so, I want
    to let everyone know that although I don’t support WAR, I love and
    support the warriors, those mostly young people, most of whom come from
    the lower socioeconomic levels of our society, who put themselves in
    harm’s way on orders from the silverbacks in the rear echelons.

    Three of
    the four boys who
    have brightened my life and lightened my burden for more than
    a decade are in the U.S. military and could be, for all I know at
    this time, in harm’s way.  They didn’t start the fire, and I know
    it was not bloodlust or hatred for anyone that impelled each of them
    into military life. For them, as it is for most of our country’s modern
    warriors, it was economic needs, the promise of a free education and a
    way to support their families through hard economic times. 
    Patriotism, for them, came later.  It’s part of the training they
    received.

    The waste and destruction, pain and suffering, loss and
    dislocation–the sheer human insanity of war appalls and distresses
    me.  That some of our boys and girls over there find the time and
    human compassion to carry wounded enemy fighters to safety or
    teach a bunch of village kids the songs and dances from home–their
    courage, humor, and humanity inspire and uplift me.

    You won’t generally catch me waving any flag, except possibly a
    green one.  I’m a one-worlder, unrepentent and vocal in my
    contempt for jingoistic exclusion of anyone from the all-embracing
    concept of humanity, of US.  In my reality, we are all ONE.

    But I thought today that it was time to put up a few yellow ribbons
    in support of the grunts under fire out there.  Understand that
    I’m sending out my loving vibes in support of the cannon fodder on both
    sides of this war.  I love ‘em all.

    After I got to Google, the image search took on a life of its
    own.  I learned a few things.  “Yellow Ribbon” is not only an
    idea in a song, a visible show of support and “welcome home” to those
    gone away to prison or war.  It is also a quilt and a
    cocktail.

    The American Folklife Center
    website has several articles on the history of the symbolic yellow
    ribbons.  At left is “The yellow ribbon that Penne Laingen tied
    around her oak tree in 1979, when her husband, Bruce Laingen, was among
    those taken hostage in Iran.”

    “Mrs. Laingen’s source of inspiration was a popular song by Irwin
    Levine and L. (Larry) Russell Brown, copyrighted in 1972 under the
    title “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree.” (American Folklife
    Center)

    In the flurry of little lapel-pin ribbons supporting various causes, yellow has become associated with suicide prevention.

    I
    was pleased to see that not everyone  has lost sight of the fact
    that the original idea, suggested in the song, was to welcome back a
    prisoner returning from incarceration.

    If you have a loved one who is locked up, check out the Yellow Ribbon Campaign.

    Whatever we’re trying to say with the yellow ribbons:  whether
    we want to support our troops under fire, our incarcerated loved ones,
    or those whose despair puts them at risk for suicide, the ribbons say
    that we have not given up.

    It’s a sentiment that I can get wholeheartedly behind.

    Never give up.

    All things must pass.

    We shall be free someday.

  • I started a new blogring today, and in trying to “invite others to join”, I kept getting a series of error messages telling me the recipients I’d named weren’t registered at Xanga or was an invalid email address.  I double-checked my spelling, shortened the list, clicked SUBMIT again (Does anyone understand how badly I hate to submit?) and once again… so if you get a series of messages from me, or one, or none, blame it on Xanga, and come join Xangroup Therapy.

  • Update at end, following postscript:


    Two things on my mind today:


    First, I have a followup to what I wrote on Jihad.


    For a couple of days I kept asking myself, “What was he thinking?”  I’m referring to prez shrub, of course, the man who may go down in history as having touched off the Big Jihad.  Then , in answer to my unspoken question, I had a thought:  “What if…?”


    He is, I have heard, a born-again Christian.  Since that particular terminology, that doctrinal “rebirth in Christ,” is not part of the dogma for the more sedate sects of Protestantism, nor, unless I’ve been misinformed, of Catholicism, he might belong to one of those sects that teach of End Times, Tribulation, Rapture and all that.


    If that’s true, perhaps getting into the White House and finding himself in possession of awesome power, he started seeing himself as an instrument of God on a big scale.  Maybe he felt it incumbent on him to trigger the Tribulation. 


    If he believes that he’s going to be carried off in a Rapture while the unbelievers fight it out here on Earth, that could explain his actions.  It’s the closest thing to a “rational” explanation I’ve come up with yet.  He has done other things and made statements which are consistent with delusions of grandeur.  It just might be….





    The other matter on my mind today, closer to where I’m at, involves astrology and this intense period of experience I’ve been going through.

    Last night, It occurred to me, finally, that this IS one of those intense times.  I’ve written previously about the fact that my life does not cycle between good times and hard times as many people’s do.  For me, it’s all mixed up together and my life cycles between relatively quiet times and times of intensity.  Intense times include breakthroughs and breakdowns, love and terror, gains and losses, all at once or one right after another.


    Twenty-some years ago, I identified a pattern in my natal chart involving clusters of lights, planets and asteroids around the tenth and twenty-fifth degrees of several signs.  That provides a crazy mix of transiting aspects every time some passing planet crosses either of those degrees.


    I’ve been able on many occasions to discover such angular activation in my chart when I was experiencing intense activity, novelty, or upheaval in my life.  This time is no exception.


    At the beginning of this month, there was a New Moon, a Sun/Moon conjunction, at 10° Aries.  Today, Mercury is trine my Ascendant and square my Sun (exact today, but in effect for several days before and after). 


    Tomorrow, there is a Jupiter direct station conjunct my natal Pluto and aspecting the stellia of the “curse/blessing pattern.”  Saturn has been and will remain in contact with that pattern for weeks, as is Neptune for an even longer period of time since its traverse of the Zodiac takes longer.


    The Neptune angle is especially prominent.  It forms a Grand Trine in Air Signs:  Neptune in Aquarius, trine my most elevated planet Mars on my Midheaven in Libra, and the ruler of my chart, Uranus (ruler of Aquarius) which was stationary in Gemini at my birth.  This could account for some of the weird air-headedness of this usually down-to-earth (yeah, right… I hear some of you who know me thinking) Virgo.


    Now that I have a clue what’s up, I can relax and enjoy it.


    POSTSCRIPT


    This has been an itch at the back of my mind since I read the report Stu Hughes’s brother left in “comments” on Stu’s warblog about his injury.  He called it an “accident” with a landmine.  Dammit, when someone is killed or injured by a landmine, that’s no accident!


    Update:  Oh yeah! and Oh dear.

    Oh, yeah!  Sarah left this great LINK in a comment.  It beautifully supports my insight on Dubya’s psychology.


    Oh, dear, somehow I gave d_e_s the impression that INTENSITY is rough, I guess.  I love intensity.  Boredom used to be one of my biggest dangers.  If I got bored, I’d find a way to get in trouble, sure as shit.  With the acceleration of time that comes with age, I’ve gotten past boredom, no time for it any more.  But intense times give me a lot to appreciate, once I get myself accelerated into sync with the times.  The rough time comes when I’m trying to catch up with what’s going on, before I notice that it’s another one of THOSE times.

  • Euphoric recall…


    That’s the human tendency to forget unpleasantness and hang onto happy memories… or to distort real memories so that they are more pleasant in retrospect than living through the time was.  If not for euphoric recall, few women would choose to have a second child, so it has its survival value.


    I’m venting here.  If you find it tedious to read the recitation of someone else’s obscure ills, move on.  I’m also sorta beating up on myself a bit, and I’d appreciate it if you maternal, touchy-feely types would rein in the impulse to ”poor baby” me or remind me that I’m a worthwhile human being.  I screwed up and I’m not in any mood to argue about it.


    Why KaiOaty?  Why did I choose to invoke Trickster?  Well, if you don’t invite him, he crashes the party anyway… better to admit from the start that he’s part of the mix any time I get involved in anything.  Coyote is part of who I am, the quintessential exemplar of what not to do and of the worst possible way to go about whatever one does.  If that’s not an essential facet of my dharma, then there is no such thing as dharma.


    But why KaiOaty and not Coyote?  Quite simple, really:  I didn’t want anyone mistaking my KaiOaty for a kai-oat coyote, the ones the good ol’ boys hunt down and kill for kicks.  Why do they have to be so damned proud of that, I wonder?  When I did image searches for coyotes to put on my site, I had to wade through far too many snapshots of grinning rednecks holding up dead canids.


    I also didn’t want anyone mistakenly calling him coy-OH-tay, the correct Spanish pronunciation for the song dog of the deserts and mountains.  I wanted it to be clear to those in the know that my Coyote is the Ban of the O’odham, the Old Man Coyote of the myths, the mythic twin of Raven who lives in the coastal forests that were once, but are no longer, outside coyote’s range.


    I never heard a Native American storyteller pronounce Coyote with a long initial O or with only two syllables.  He is always k-long I-oaty, k’eye’oh’tee, in the stories:  “One day KaiOaty was going along….”  I would a thousand times rather sit down and listen to one of those stories than to one that begins, “Once upon a time….”  KaiOaty is always good for a laugh, at his expense, of course.


    When I started that new Xanga account on New Years Day, I had no plan to use it to do readings.  I didn’t know what I was going to do with it.  It was an impulse.  Coyote made me do it.  And then a couple of months later war was threatening, the government and media were giving me the usual spin and disinformation and I wanted to find out what was going on.  I did a reading and people responded and I decided to use the site that was sitting idle for that purpose.


    This is where the euphoric recall comes in.  I ”forgot” (as if one could actually forget such an essential part of one’s nature) that I’m not a pleaser, that I tell it like it is and people usually don’t want to hear it.  I actually did forget, until reminded by the feedback, the wise counsel of E. J. Gold who taught me that when people ask for help what they really want is to be comforted, and that they will reject any real help that is offered. 


    I forgot all those years of playing stump-the-psychic, when people would wait until I was done giving them the spiritual readings that I consider most important, before telling me that what they wanted to know about was some mundane material dilemma they faced.  Do people really think the right thing to do is to climb the mountain and consult the oracle when what they need is a plumber to get their shit flushing?


    I forgot that a majority of people don’t read instructions and disclaimers, and that a majority of those who do read them disregard them.  I also forgot how severely that sort of work depletes my brain chemistry.  The first few days, I forgot to take any DMAE to replenish my acetylcholine… and I’ve been neglecting to take my regular supplements ever since my acetylcholine level tanked and my mind went foggy.


    How could I have forgotten how tedious and frustrating it is to encounter denial when the truth is obvious to both reason and intuition?  I momentarily let myself ignore the familiar fact that although I’m very good at standing up and talking back to people who don’t want to hear what I have to say, that I really don’t enjoy it.  I know that, but I let myself disregard it.  Why?  Because I’m an idiot, that’s why.  I could be one of the few idiots on the planet who scores in the high end of the 99th percentile on IQ tests.   That’s how I know I’m one of Coyote’s people.


    I’m not quitting.  When I get my brain chemistry back into the “superlative” zone, I’ll be back there, finishing the Opening of the Key interpretation to explicate and elucidate the war in Iraq.  I’ll wade back into the fray with those who deny that they are the source of their own troubles, and with those who want answers without asking questions. 


    But first, I will FORCE them to read the disclaimer.  I will DEMAND that they pass a quiz on its finer points and sign, in BLOOD, a pledge that they have read and understood it and swear to abide by it… yeah, right, I’ll do that just like I made Doug stop chewing gum “forever” after he stuck his on the felt of the lodge’s pool table.  What I’ll really do is what I’ve done all along:  I’ll plod along, saying it straight and being misconstrued, giving help and getting blame because the truth “hurts” those who don’t want to face it.  And when the stink over there gets to be more than I can bear, I’ll come over here and vent.


    What else can a true Coyote do?


      

  • Okay, enough of this bogus “holiday” levity.  Doug’s little April Fool joke was cute, dig them kittens, but I’ve got serious matters on my mind and it is my blog after all.


    Iraq War Sparks Calls for Jihad


    The Associated Press headline above does not strike me as news.   I’m sure it is true that there are now, in the Islamic world, more voices than ever calling for Jihad.  The accuracy of the story is not at issue for me.  I have two basic issues with this concept of Muslims calling and being called for Jihad.


    One of my quibbles is that there has been a Jihad going on for centuries.  When Mohammed spoke of it and was quoted by his scribes in the Q’ran, he wasn’t coining a new word.  There were tribes and nations fighting and believing they were doing it for their gods long before then.



    “Jihad doctrine divides the peoples of the world into two irreconcilable groups: the dar al-Islam (the land of Islam) and the dar al-harb, (land of war) the non-Muslim world, destined to come under Islamic jurisdiction either by the peaceful conversion of its inhabitants, or by armed conflict. Jihad is the permanent state of war of the dar al-Islam against infidels until they submit to Islamic domination. Peace is accepted only temporarily according to circumstances.”


    Dhimmitude: the Islamic system of governing populations conquered by jihad wars… a uniform civilization developed throughout the centuries by all non-Muslim indigenous people, who were vanquished by a jihad-war and governed by shari’a law. It is this civilization which is called dhimmitude.  It is characterized by the different strategies developed by each dhimmi group to survive as non-Muslim entity in their Islamized countries.” Dhimmitude.org 


    Okay, so Jihad is old news to the dhimmi, those already conquered by Islam’s armies.  This leads to my second quibble with the AP headline.  Can anyone find it remarkable that Bush’s invasion of Iraq has increased and amplified the calls to Jihad?


    Just as there are peace-loving Christians appalled by The Crusades, both the Mediaeval ones and this one of Dubya’s, there are Muslims who desire peace–just peace, without necessarily turning the whole planet into dar al-Islam to get it.  Some of them have been turning their little corners of Islam into a quite different culture, one not based on conquest.  And just as in other cultures, there have been many Muslims who were focused more on their own private lives and personal drives than on either peace or Jihad.


    Our unelected leader’s actions and public statements must necessarily frighten some of the peace-lovers into a combative stance.  The invasion of Iraq is going to raise the political consciousness of many of those formerly self-absorbed Muslims.  Fence-sitters are going to come down on the side of Islamic solidarity.


    I say that if the man and his keepers intended all along to touch off an all-out global Jihad, it would have been only proper and fair for them to tell us so at the start.  Supposedly, he has experts in political matters to advise him.  Someone must have known that the Arab world would be galvanized to action by throwing all those munitions into their portion of the planet.  If not, then the situation in DC is even worse than I imagined. 


    DON’T PERVERT HISTORY: JIHAD IS JIHAD by Dr. Walid Phares


  • The Kid Blogs



    What you’re looking at is a screen capture from an old Japanese game, Neko Yojimbo, or Kitten Fighter.


    Those familiar with the Street Fighter series should recognize the layout.  In fact, many aspects were similar.  Shown selected here are the two main rivals of the game, Mittens and Boots.  In the Street Fighter series, these would be analagous to Ryu and Ken.  Just to the right of Boots (2P selection box), you can see Greebo (Or Guribo, depending on your preferences for translation), equivalent of M. Bison.


    This is obviously a screen from the first iteration, as the character select screen is missing Yu and Muffin, the new characters that appeared in Kitten Fighter 2.  Easily the oddest fighter in the bunch, Yu, along with being a Sphynx, had a move that let him slip nimbly under the other fighter.  Rather like Dhalsim’s Yoga Teleport, except Yu could be hit by a low swat or kick while performing the move.  However, the move was tricky, as it started with what appeared to be the windup for Yu’s Flying Claw.  Thus, many human opponents would either go for a jumping hit, or block high while Yu slid smoothly under them and performed a Yamanekosougi on their unprotected back.  On harder difficulties, though, the AI was rarely fooled.


    Most people are unaware of the existence of the Kitten Fighter franchise, and for good reason.  The game didn’t receive any coverage outside of Japan, and only sold well enough within the borders to warrant the production of one sequel.  The original was slated for translation and distribution overseas, but the idea was scrapped early in the translation phase.  The sequel sold dismally, possibly due to the release of one of the Street Fighter titles in the same month, although those that played it said the new characters added a nice bit of variety.


    All in all, the two Kitten Fighter games were a nice try at throwing some variety into the fighting genre, but ultimately failed due to poor replayability (Beating the tournament mode merely showed you a generic ending with the picture of your kitten in the background), and bad timing on the second release.


    …And if you hadn’t figured it out by now, April Fool’s.