Lance Armstrong is unbelievable. Most of us know the story. He's a prodigy of an athlete as the only son of a poor single mom in some rural town in Texas. He's on the small side but tough as hell, so in a state that only cares about one thing - football - he starts swimming and running and cycling every single day starting when he's a kid until he's literally exhausted at the end of the day, consuming tons of spaghetti or other carbs each night. This continues into his early teens, where he regularly competes against and beats much older boys from high school. In high school he competes against college and pro athletes and starts to be the talk of the county, then the state, then pretty soon he's out of high school and training in Europe for the Giro d'Italia and soon the Tour de France, not to mention still competing in triathlons in Texas and winning them. He keeps finishing better and better and looks to be one of the top cyclists in the world, when all of a sudden his world comes crashing down when he's diagnosed with testicular cancer.

He has to lose the little guy, but good thing us guys carry spares! Unfortunately after a period of remission the cancer returns like crazy in different parts of his body, but most notably his brain. Several of the best oncologists in the world give him 5% chance or less to live, some saying he's got a matter of months. Instead he tries a radical treatment from some guy in Chicago (I think...been awhile since I read his book), which makes him violently sick and turn to skin and bones for a year or two, miserable every single day. His mom is his only friend who sticks with him, all his sponsors cancel their contracts with him, most famously Nike, and he's broke. The treatment goes ahead anyway, an experimental case for a patient with no other choice since none of the normal protocols will cure him, and eventually in a last ditch effort chemo treatment is combined with radiation AND extremely risky brain surgery (which he has to stay awake for) to remove huge tumors in his brain and keep the blood and bone cancers suppressed. Somehow, miraculously, he lives, and after a couple more years he's still in remission, scrawny and looking ten years older instead of just a couple. He's so weak at the end of his treatment he can only drink liquids and uses a walker to get around for months. His body is destroyed.

Then comes one of the most remarkable things I have ever witnessed (by reading about it; I remember the time quite well as it was at my peak of being a sports fan so I followed his story as closely as I could). He learned to walk again, then jog. Then begin to eat healthy food, and slowly put on muscle. He never regained the larger build he once had, but stayed light and trim, having lost 20-30 pounds of lean muscle mass even once he was rehabilitated. But "rehabilitated" medically isn't enough for Armstrong, so he starts to ride all day, every day. He eats scientifically, he trains as long as the sun is up. He not only gets back to where he once was but with his body now much lighter, he actually develops a better VO2 max (sort of the amount of oxygen your capillaries can take in from each breath), his heart is 30% larger than the average person's, his body fat is a preposterous 5%. His power to weight ratio is through the roof, and he trains every single day, whether it's raining or snowing or asteroids are bombarding the earth. He wears out riding partners and has to change them at mid-day because they can't even keep up his training pace.

Finally after a year back on the Pro circuit but still not sponsored, he places well in the Giro and some Spanish events, and suddenly there's the US Postal Service team wanting to recruit him, and a raft of sponsors. Nobody can believe he's back from the dead. They make a big deal of his story and how he's won simply by returning and qualifying. But this is Lance. He competes in the Tour de France again for the first time since his illness, the most prestigious event in cycling, and wins it. That win may have been one of the most shocking things I ever remember reading about in sports.

People write heartwarming stories and even the French reluctantly embrace an American as a hero, especially when he moves to France and buys a small house, to train there year round, and learns to speak French well enough to conduct interviews and chat with neighbors. The next year, he proves it was no fluke, winning the Tour again. He's now in his mid twenties. To cut to the chase, he becomes the greatest cyclist in the modern history of the sport, breaking all records by winning SEVEN Tour de Frances in a row, something that is too incredible to describe when there's a field of hundreds for the weeks-long event, which meanders all over France and dips into Germany and Austria. He gains the reputation for being unbeatable, which he his. He never loses a race again.

The French are fickle fans, and while on the one hand embracing him on the other hand they create a witch hunt in the media, accusing him of doping. As a result, drug testing gets more sophisticated and more random and frequent, to the point where nearly all his closest competitors, including seven of the top ten in the world, are eventually banned by testing positive, yet Lance never once tests positive. He passes every test every given to him (and still has to this day), and decides on his own after seven consecutive Tour victories to retire on top, in the best shape he's ever been in. He's the Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods of cycling, except maybe better. And in an age when athlethes train harder and more scientifically than ever, honing their bodies to perfection, no one is even close. And he seems graced somehow - he seems to never slip on wet corners, never ends up in the pile when the peloton goes down en masse, never cramps or gets ill (or maybe he just fights through it), never has a serious injury. When he does fall he seems to find an extra something inside himself to make up the time. He easily surpasses Miguel Indurain and Eddy Mercx's records and becomes the greatest cyclist of all time except to those Mercx fans in Belgium who will never concede anyone better than their hero, even if he won 10 or 12 Tours in a row.

After retiring, he starts running marathons again, and finishes respectably in the famous Boston Marathon as well as in New York and several other premier events. He also takes up mountain biking in his spare time, training in the Rockies and the Sierra Nevadas and quickly becoming one of the elite mountain bikers (timed climbs and endurance events, not crazy downhill stuff) in the world, in a totally different kind of sport where there are famous people in their own right who have earned X-Games medals and dedicated their lived to the sport, and yet find themselves losing to Armstrong badly. At one point he's ranked #2 in the world, and the guy ranked #1 says Lance could beat him pretty easily if he was really motivated to do so. His "Livestrong" yellow bracelets have raised millions for cancer research over the years. People talk about him going into politics.

The latest, now, is that, after three or four years of not racing, he's decided to return to pro cycling and try to dominate the Tour once again, as well as try to become the best endurance mountain biker in the world (update: though lately I haven't heard much of anything about mountain biking). Maybe a top marathoner as well, and who knows, maybe he'll find time to fit some swimming in and dominate the triathlon circuit too. He'll be nearing his 38th birthday when he competes in the Tour this summer, an age where you should be retiring, and at which no cyclist has ever won the Tour (his seventh victory came when he was 34 - the last time someone that old won it was in the 1920s). All these totally ripped machines of men in their mid-20s and absolute prime condition will line up to take him down.

Which is why I wouldn't be surprised at all if this unbelievable athlete came back and won it all again, just to show he can. Despite his upbringing in rural Texas and George Bush's attempts to use him as a celebrity friend, he's remained a Democrat who is "left of center," pro-choice, and very individually-minded. He's openly atheist. He appears to be a good dad to his three kids and states now that he would rather become the president of the American Cancer Society than the Governor of Texas, so that he can reach everyone and not just one half of the electorate. This guy is one of my personal heroes, without a doubt.

Links to check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Armstrong
http://www.lancearmstrong.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOQflZqzn_U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHJErrp4eOw

The flag.

Three monks are sitting outside their Zendo on a beautiful day. The flag at the top of the building is blowing softly in the wind.

The young monk says, "The flag is moving harmoniously."

The older, wiser monk says, "It is the air which is moving. The flag only reacts passively."

For a long moment, the Zen master sits quietly. Finally he says, "It is the mind which is moving."

—Zen Kōan

Do not feed the blogger.

He tends to do things like this:

B  R  A  V  A  D  O
R  E  N  A  M  E  D
A  N  A  L  O  G  Y
V  A  L  U  E  R  S
A  M  O  E  B  A  S
D  E  G  R  A  D  E
O  D  Y  S  S  E  Y

Tolkien again.

Tolkien was very big on certain classes of being simply being created superior to others. It perhaps reflects his belief in men, angels, and God. At any rate, there is a strong hierarchy implied in his writings, and for a being, even a hero, to defeat someone from a class "above" him or her was virtually unheard of in his writings, as if it would upset the natural order of creation or that there were just vast gulfs between the power of his creations that such a feat was practically unthinkable. Yet it did happen, on rare occasion. Based on my readings of the History of Middle Earth and The Silmarillion, this seems to be the order I would put his classes of created folk in, from Eru (God, essentially), to the lowliest common man.

An important note: Some denizens of Arda simply do not fit into this scheme. Where would one put the ents? Or the Beornings? Or wildlife like wargs? What about vampires and demonic dogs like Carcaroth, or werewolves? These made appearances in First-Age tales but were never fleshed out enough to give the reader any idea of their origin or nature. Where they living being corrupted? Or were the animated constructs of Morgoth? That skews the picture considerably. Likewise, dragons are not listed for although indeed mighty, they were only ever as mighty as the animating force invested in them (again, usually by Morgoth). It was said they "bred" but it was also said they were without souls. So constructs - creatures controlled by another and in thrall to that entity, possessing so soul and no will of their own in a sense - do not make the list. I've added trolls and giants to this group but I'm not firm in my opinion. If orcs have free will, as corrupted elves, what about these other monstrous humanoids? The text to my knowledge just does not say. It's possible that Aulë, having nothing better to do after being chastised for his creation of the dwarved, tinkered around later and formed these being of stone, but did not attempt to imbue them with an independent spirit. Who knows. 

The great spiders, children of Ungoliant, are not on the list because they ranged from Ungoliant herself, who literally extinguished light with her presence and of whom even Morgoth himself was wary, down through Shelob and to the certainly menacing, but quite killable, spiders of Mirkwood. We don't know the origins of Ungoliant; she is a mystery, and thus must be left on any authoritative list.

About the Ainur who remained with Eru in the void and did not enter Arda (the overwhelming majority, it's implied), we know little. Were they mighty like the Valar? Mightier? More modest in power like the Maiar? There's simply no way of telling, and sine they don't come into the story after the creation tale, I've left the matter unresolved as I think it must be.

Lastly, Tom Bombadil and Goldberry remain utter enigmas and I've made no effort to insert them in this hierarchy whatsoever. I think Tolkien would have smiled knowing I chose not to even try.

Now then, from most to least mighty, here are the denizens of the world of Arda:

Eru/Illuvatar
The 'Powers' *
Lesser Valar *
Maiar *
Vanyar **
Noldor **
Teleri **
Sindar **
Avani **
Numenorians ***
Edain ***
Dunedain ***
Dwarves ****
Uruk-Hai ******
Rohirrim ***
PettyDwarves ****
Olog Hai ******
Stoors *****
Hobbits *****
Wose/WildMen ***
CommonMen ***

* Collectively, Ainur
** Collectively, Elves
*** Collectively, Men
**** Collectively, Dwarves
***** Collectively, Halflings
****** Collectively, Orcs

I hope this list is pretty self-explanatory. One could quibble with some of my choices in the bottom half of the list, where it's not as clear cut. I think it's much harder to prove me wrong in the top half.

A few notes: Valaraukar (Balrogs), Istari (Wizards), Sauron, and possibly some other beings possessing souls and which appeared in the tales are all in their original nature Maiar, servents of the great Valar. That is why they seem to be absent from the list, but "maiar" covers the lot of them.

If you have questions, agreements, disagreements, want to point out that I've completely missed some race or other, or have anything to add or comment on, please feel free to add to the comments section.

In Bedlam,
Nothing changes from day to day.

Those Abram-Men,
Busking money on the clay streets.

I see them every day
Out the tiny window above my seat.

In Hell,
Nothing changes but the stoke of the heat.

In Bedlam,
Parishoners come to pour pity on us.

Patched,
Trick'd up with Ribbons, Red-Tape.

Fox-tails and rags,
Pretending to be shadows, beside themselves.

In Hell,
Nothing changes but the shadows themselves.

In 1403,
They drove more wits out of the women and men

Within these walls,
Then they have ever put back into them.

Because in Bedlam,
Nothing changes down these shiny halls

Except the fashions
You get a peek at every spring and fall

Over the redbrick wall.

BLOG

Because I hated the new template (called a layout now) Blogger kept encouraging me to use, and which I finally tried, I have switched back to my old-fashioned, rustic, uncluttered look.

I think the deal is, unless you know your way all round HTML and CSS and are willing to manually set it up that way - in which case you likely wouldn't be using something as newbish as Blogger - then you have two options. Option one - if you had a blog prior to Google's big "upgrade" and which you put a decent amount of time into customizing (fonts, getting rid of the dumb blogger adverts in the code, widening the columns somewhat, and so on), KEEP IT in the old format. Otherwise, it will look scrunched, and all your customization will fail or be ignored or cause microscopic singularities to occur in the fabric of spacetime, probably within your own home. Try looking for your lost keys then.

If however you are starting a blog anew on Blogger, you really have no choice but to use on of their new layouts anyways, but the good news it that they will look just fine. It's not the new layouts and methods for handling things like widgets which the Blogger team has grafted onto the old simpler structure that's the problem - it's the conversion algorithm they've kludged into being which fouls up old blogs and makes them look terrible in the new scheme. They just don't translate well, don't look the same as they used to. I've a hunch the more you've messed with the official templates, the worse the translation goes; I did a lot of excision on the actual HTML in my own blog template, not wanting it to look like anyone else's, and also pretty extensively mussed about with the typographic parameters (won't go into detail here) and the sidebar (basically only leaving a customized navigation tool, which I didn't even like). So, I shouldn't have expected things to go well.

It basically killed all my fonts and formatting, leaving it almost unreadable with no leading to speak of and a miniscule x-height. Without getting technical, I decided that fixing it would have been harder than restoring the old template, which fortunately I could do. Yay, back to normal. Most of the other blogs I run use the new layout, which is fine with me. I like widgets and polls and so forth, but I think I'll keep this particular blog pristine as long as Blogger will let me. If they ever shut off the ability to use the older templates, I'll move to WordPress or Movable Type. Someplace which actually lets me create something which somewhat resembles what I have in my head, which Blogger patently does not do.

All is not forgiven.

In San Francisco
On Telegraph Hill
Should have spoken up then
Because now I never will

You made me long for the world
You made me loathe and curl
Destroyed, unemployed
Unprotected

You made me feel like a child star
You crashed my dreams in a car
Every child star dies young
So they say

Don't judge me now
Don't judge me at all
Anyhow
Years ago I may well have impressed you

But look what human lifetimes do
Scarred and barred by time
And this largely self-destructive
Brain and body of mine

I pick up my cross and walk on.

(Gayle Feyrer)

Puff the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee
Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff
And brought him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff.

Together they would travel on a boat with billowed sail
Jackie kept a lookout perched on Puff's gigantic tail
Noble kings and princes would bow when e'er they came
Pirate ships would lower their flag when Puff roared out his name.

A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys
Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys
One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more
And Puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar.

His head was bent in sorrow, green scales fell like rain
Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane
Without his lifelong friend, Puff could not be brave
So Puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave.

(Peter Yarrow)

Two from Peter Murphy.

“One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell”

Always be careful
When you abuse the one you love
The hour or the day no-one can tell

But one day, goodbye will be farewell
And you will never see the one you love again
You will never see the one you love again

I have been thinking
What with my final brain cell
How time grips you slyly in its spell

And before you know, goodbye will be farewell
And you will never see the one you love again
And the smiling children tell you that you smell

Well, just look at me
A savage beast, I've got nothing to sell
And when I die, I want to go to Hell

And that's when
Goodbye should be farewell
Oh....

One day goodbye will be farewell
So grab me while we still have the time.

(©1998 Morrissey)

“Something Is Squeezing My Skull”

Im doing very well
I can block out the present and the past now
I know by now you think
I should have straightened myself out
Thank you, drop dead

Oh, something is squeezing my skull
Something I can barely describe
There is no love in modern life

Im doing very well
Its a miracle I even made this far
The motion of taxis excites me
When you peel it back and bite me

Oh, something is squeezing my skull
Something I can barely describe
There is no hope in modern life

Oh, something is squeezing my skull
Something I cant fight
No true friends in modern life

Diazepam...that's Valium...temazepam...lithium
HRT...ECT...how long must I stay on this stuff?

Don't give me any more
Don't give me any more
Don't give me any more
Don't give me any more

You swore you would not give me any more
Don't give me any more
Don't give me any more
Don't give me any more

You swore...
You swore...
You swore...

(©2008 Morrissey)

“whitsun”

This is not what I meant:
Stucco arches, the banked rocks sunning in rows,
Bald eyes or petrified eggs,
Grownups coffined in stockings and jackets,
Lard-pale, sipping the thin
Air like a medicine.

The stopped horse on his chromium pole
Stares through us; his hooves chew the breeze.
Your shirt of crisp linen
Bloats like a spinnaker. Hat brims
Deflect the watery dazzle; the people idle
As if in hospital.

I can smell the salt, all right.
At our feet, the weed-mustachioed sea
Exhibits its glaucous silks,
Bowing and truckling like an old-school oriental.
You’re no happier than I about it.
A policeman points out a vacant cliff

Green as a pool table, where cabbage butterflies
Peel off to sea as gulls do,
And we picnic in the death-stench of a hawthorn.
The waves pulse like hearts.
Beached under the spumy blooms, we lie
Sea-sick and fever-dry.

(sylvia plath)

Photographs by Dan & Jean Fogelberg

...and a drawing.

The Grim.

What's on and poppin'?
I'm watching old monster movies
Again
Black and white
Black comedies
White angels
Skyfire microwave radiation
Background hiss
Creation seems like this
Maybe Hitler will
Someday be picked up by receivers
But all true believers know
That television snow
Has nothing on Bela, or
The day the earth stood still, so
To those ahead of their time
And in the know
We still miss ya,
You know.

Cold war geography.

They tell me angels are dead.
The city of angels, the pride of brooklyn,
The sleeping nights
Where we wandered, pondered, lied
To one another
And could it be??
The love we never showed each other led
To our loneliness and unholiness
Whenever days are mentioned
Skies cry out and spill tears all over
Stubbornly cry out a good life;
I wanted castles if you remember
And you preferred ponies and ponytails
But we were off the rails,
I've never felt so strongly a scary pull
For anyone else but you and you
Couldn't have cared less but you did truly
Love me, in was written in your
Bleached and frozen smile, in your darkest eyes.
Something under the bleachers
A craze, a mirror of the afternoon
Beneath a solar storm, white on black
We danced over unsaid things
And never found what we were seeking,
Like the most beautiful flower
Stillborn in an unseasonal frost
We lost everything.
But we take our breaths now,
One at a time like anyone else, and how
Do we put into perspective
All those years we shoved into days
Into minutes, into snapshots-
How did I let you go, or you me? It was
I won't say golden. But it was golden,
And platinum, and forest green and blue and silver
And every shade between, we lost
And never found again such secret things
As cold war geography
Terrorist plots to keep you from
Holding me. And lots of crazy men, they
Surrounded you. And lots of mistaken girls,
They absconded me, they taunted me
But I was always taken by you
YOU, do you hear me??
I was next in line for eternity
Willing to drum in 5/7 time
Or discover dark things and make
Them irresistibly precious, just for you.
And I couldn't care less about the world
Were it not for you. And I've never
Lost my soul, if I had such a thing
Like I did for you,
Just to be with you.
We put our greenthumbs together
And killed a landscape of hope
Frozen orchids forever tangled
Two beautiful people dreaming the same thing
Lost the plot and felt the rope
As the tide swings, and the chair is kicked
You say you'll be with me forever,
But forever only meant a day
In our minds. And lifetimes
Stand or fall based on far less than that.
I know you are in your room drawing.
And you know that I am here,
In my drawing room writing, and you are there
Where I can never reach, like a star vaulted
Into the sky, most beautiful and brightest
In all the heavens
A forever thing, still feeling
What I thought you'd see
As I was falling.
And it's only cold war geography
That keeps our hearts from thawing.
And effervescent kisses, blown wishes,
I tacked you into my night sky
With razorblades; You were high on trying
To be free, but Nicola, under
Black-inked heavens never dreamt in
Other women's philosophies
You always knew it was me, and
You always fled from perfect things
Even as our fateful day was dawning.

HAUNTED WHEN THE MINUTES DRAG.

I touch the clothes you left behind
That still retain your shape and lines
I trace the outline of your eyes
We're in the mirror hypnotised
I find a solitary photo
Gone, and I still reminisce....

I'm haunted.

Haunted by your soul
Haunted by your hair
Haunted by your clothes
Haunted by your eyes
By your soul, by your hair
By your clothes, by your eyes
By your voice, by your smile
By your mouth, by your soul
By your hair, by your clothes
By your eyes, by your voice
By your smile, by your mouth
By your soul.

So this is for when you feel happy
And this is for when you feel sad
And this is for when you feel...
Nothing.

Ooooh when the minutes drag
Ooooh when the minutes drag

And this is for the tears that won't dry
And this is for a bright blue sky
And this is for when you feel...
Lucky.

And this is for when you feel...
Lucky.

Ooooh when the minutes drag.
Ooooh when the minutes drag.

So this is for when you're feeling happy again
And this is for when you're feeling sad
And this is for when you feel...
Something.

Ooooh when the minutes drag.
Ooooh when the minutes drag.

(Draft - Daniel Ash - Copyright Love and Rockets Music)

untitled

yesterday
was the birthday of my pumpkin
has she had a good time?
has she died upon her vine?
oh and by the way,
did we ever really try?

i know I tried

i see something in that
old photo I keep
something
in your eyes
yesterday,
was your birthday and your time

apart from mine

Mars is red.

No, I mean really, really red. For some reason tonight it looked like a tiny round fire engine up in the sky. It wasn't a little spot with a hint of orange or red, or yellowish-red - it was RED. Like the Terminator's eye after he cuts the humanoid eye out with a scalpel.

Why was it so red? I have no idea. But if tomorrow night is anything like tonight, look somewhere between the south and southeast, fairly low on the horizon at about 11:30 or midnight (directly on the opposite side of the sky from Orion if your internal compass doesn't work too well), and believe me, you'll have no trouble finding it. It's the really red dot.

Speaking of Orion, if you look down a way and a bit left of the belt, outside the four main stars that make the his shoulders and knees, you'll see a really bright star that's a bit bluish, but more bright white than anything. You might even mistake it for a planet. I'm looking this star up right now to see which one it is - at first I thought it might be Jupiter given the brightness, but it was the wrong color (Jupiter is yellowish), and more tellingly, it twinkled. Stars twinkle, planets don't.

I'm pretty sure the star I'm seeing is Sirius, because a) I know Sirius is bluish-white, being about twice as massive as the sun and an amazing 22 times more luminous were you to view the two side-by-side from the same distance. It's usually the brightest star in the sky besides the sun, the only things brighter being the moon, Venus, and sometimes Mars and Jupiter; and b) I know Sirius is in the vicinity of Orion because of the myth of Orion the hunter and his dog Sirius (hence its nickname, "the dog star." In fact, the more I think about the position it was in the more certain I am it is in fact Sirius and not some other giant like Algol, Betelgeuse, Rigel, Arcturus, or Deneb, all of which are in the wrong part of the sky and are of a different hue.

I'm embarrassed to admit that despite knowing a great deal about cosmology and astrophysics from a theoretical standpoint - how and why stars form, their journey in time along the "main sequence," and their ultimate fate, which depends solely upon their mass (white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole), and despite understanding in fairly profound terms the way the Universe as a whole has expanded from a singularity - the Big Bang - to its evolution into the myriad of galaxy clusters and superclusters, each galaxy itself swarming with billions of suns and untold numbers of planets orbiting those suns, and how dark matter and supermassive black holes combine to gravitationally sculpt galaxies into spirals and ellipses, and even how a mysterious force known as dark energy, applied by astronomers for lack of a better term, seems over cosmic distances to act as a sort of antigravity - a repulsive force which is actually speeding up the expansion of the Universe and may ultimately rip apart the fabric of spacetime and atoms themselves until all that's left is a soup of different 'flavored' quarks, which may or may not then condense back into a singularity and trigger a new Big Bang; despite all this, I'm actually a rather poor observational astronomer. I struggle with anything beyond the basic dozen or so constellations and the five naked-eye planets and a few globular clusters and conspicuous nebulae, such as M31 (our neighbor the Andromeda Galaxy). I have friends who are much more practically knowledgeable about the night sky, and can tell you the name of nearly everything you ask about, but lack insight (or interest) into why and how that sky got to be the way it is.

I liken it to people who collect beetles or butterflies or keep a birdwatching checklist - people who are compelled just to "collect" and show off their knowledge of nomenclature and maybe even some cladistics, but without any deeper understanding into the mechanistic operation of evolution via natural selection, driven by genes, which has brought about these objects of their affection. They just want to collect and be an expert in an esoteric field, like the 'naturalists' and 'antiquarians' of years past, without bothering to construct and rationalize for themselves a synthesis of the ideas and processes operating behind the curtain, so to speak, which brings all these amazing things we see around us into being. I've always been more interested in the fundamental theories than being able to identify a star for someone who asks me about it, though I'd be pleased as punch to have that kind of knowledge too. But that's encyclopedic knowledge, and I don't have a particular gift for it. I'm ok, average. But it's always bored me to just memorize star patterns, or the binomial latin names of animals, or common names of garden trees and plants. I don't dismiss the need for names for all these things, an orderly system for constructing family trees, and people who know those conceptual trees' branches and twigs intimately. It takes all sorts, right? My interests and talents just lie in the more fundamental processes that create those trees in the first place; again, in the hows and whys rather than the what.

That being said, I do have a few astronomical tidbits to offer you. My mom and I noticed the other day that the crescent moon and Venus just after sunset were very close together, reminiscent of the Turkish flag. I know that the French word "croissant" literally means "crescent" (which makes sense looking at the baked item it describes), but that these were invented and named only after Romanian, Hungarian, French, and other European forces halted the advanced of the Ottoman Turks under Suleyman the Great, and thus the spreading of Islam, into Europe via a series of extremely bloody battles during which unspeakable atrocities were committed by both sides. The legend of Dracula ties into this period, as do other tales, but it's somewhat ironic that the modern Turkish flag features the crescent moon and Venus emblem, when supposedly that particular astronomical configuration was present in the sky on the night when their forces were finally routed in battle by a determined though uneasy alliance of Christian fiefdoms. Perhaps it's all just a tale made up by the victors, and the flag was already formed long before, and the French simply mocked their defeat by baking crescent-shaped bread rolls. Who knows.

But if you want to see Venus and the crescent moon together (though at the moment, Venus is actually below the moon, somewhat ruining the effect), these next couple days are your last chance until sometime in 2010.

Also, I've heard that Saturn will be more prominent than usual this year, especially in March, though I don't know any details on why that will be - whether it's because Saturn will be at perihelion (its closest approach to the sun) or simply on the same side of the Sun as the Earth during that time, making it appear closer and brighter. I'll have to read up on that. Lastly, to my eyes the Pleiades seem brighter than usual when the moon is new or not yet risen... I can plainly see six of the seven "sisters" with just my eyes, and with a moderate pair of binoculars I counted no less than thirteen daughters of Atlas the other night in that open star cluster in Taurus, something which the Greeks who named them would be quite puzzled to know!

Anyway, that's my attempt at an astronomy report for the evening. I hope you get out under a dark sky and look at all those tiny balls of burning gas and realize that it's not some pretty backdrop or Hollywood effect - that those stars and planets and satellites are really there, and that amazingly over such immensely vast distances you can actually look and see them directly with your own eyes, without the aid of any technology to abstract the matter. I still trip out when I realize this, even when staring at the moon and realizing it's this giant sphere actually right out there in the sky, falling around the earth, reflecting sunlight, and that people from this planet have walked around on it. That, to me, is astounding. Who needs fiction when the natural world is so full of wonder?

REPOWER AMERICA.

Once seemingly reduced to a punchline to a joke, Al Gore has impressed me over the years since he lost the election he won by not becoming a bitter recluse, but continuing to fight for the environment, which he does seem to actually care about. Sure, he's a politician at heart and always will be, but I wish to hell he had been elected in 2000 rather than Bush, and at the time of that controversy, I didn't necessarily think that way. Anyways, whatever you think of Gore the politician or the man, consider this site, endorsed by him but created by a groundswell of concerned citizens:

http://www.repoweramerica.org/

And the details of this seeming far-fetched plan?
http://www.repoweramerica.org/plan/

It seems nice and tidy, though I've just begun to read the technical details. I'm a naturally suspicious (but hopeful) person, and being of a scientific bent I'm greatly interested to find out how exactly we can achieve completely clean power within the meager span of 10 years, as they claim. Surely if it was that easy it would be underway? Well, perhaps not, since the petroleum industry and its lobbyists tend to thwart anything like this at every step.

Nonetheless, even a partial accomplishment of a goal like this is far better than no progress toward energy independence and greatly reduced carbon emissions. Believe me, I was one of the last holdouts on the reality of global warming, knowing something about the sun's natural cycles, the role sunspots play in climate as evidenced in ice cores containing samples of ancient atmospheres, the earth's geological past which saw both extreme ice ages and world-wide tropical conditions alike. But even I at last had to admit that what we are currently experiencing in just a few decades, and now seemingly each year, cannot be explained by nature alone. It's at least contributed to if not wholly caused by human activity, I now believe.

Anyway, like I was saying, cleaning up our act and modernizing our energy procurement, management, and emissions cannot possibly be a bad thing. At least check it out, even if you're not American. No one's forcing you to do anything. It's just a choice we all have and if enough people get involved even a little bit, maybe we can counteract those gas company lobyists and compel our politicians to put plans like this into practice. Thanks.

Mastodon, unlovely thing
Woe betide you in the modern world
Your flanks are ancient and sagging
Your tail drags
And you shift this way and that
Over matters of no importance.

I'm reminded of Pablo Neruda,
Deluded and ever ready for a fight.
Even his best friend Paz was afraid
Of the thing he had become.
And his beautiful, terrifying verse
Served to channel all he'd done.

Art, you Faustian comrade
I hate you but am at your mercy
Insofar as you aspire to philosophy
I will hate you with a fervor,
For paint and music are lovely things
Which children cling to forever.

Tired of being sick
Sick of being tired
Why does my brain act this way,
Turning off and on everyday
And everything scarily wears away
Till I feel like I'm floating in sky
Why, God, why? Tell me!!
Why? Why? Why?!?!
My neck hurts and my mind hurts
And my stomach hurts and my life hurts
And there's no escape but darkness
So I scrape along, I'll hurt people
Either way, if I stay, pray for me
If I die today
They'll cry, then try
To move along and stay strong
And if I'm wrong and 'happy' is a
Choice you make, like some say,
Then why can't I make it?
Why can't I do anything at all?
I feel paralized, watch my body
From the opposite wall
Plus I ain't done shit since I was
Timid and small
It's hell, I've been through hell
And there I dwell in silence
Rank, vile place with the stank of
Mindless, senseless but somehow
Necessary cursory blindness
Behind this sham of mental rage and violence
Metal cage, keep me from the world, I'm mindless
Too many days searching for a way to
Rewind this, live again, pick it up at
8 years old. Was even that too old?
Was the air cold yet from fruitless,
Tireless kindess, reminders
From most of the people I love
Keep your head up, one day you'll turn out
Wise and on the short list and
Exceedingly tough
But I'm none of these things,
I'm a complete, Class 5 disaster
Who cannot move, let alone pursue what
I'm after, like women, what a dream-
In truth I'm just a decent actor.
They'd hate me if I didn't bring them laughter
But it's not funny to me,
Feel like a clown with no smile,
And it's been awhile
Since I could look at a child
And indentify with that life.
So long, I contend it was another life.
And was the only reason for being
And why we return to remember it,
Late in our days, to comfort the soul
But it's like some Germanic myth
These days thally and dioxin seem Gifts
I could gladly accept, if only I could overcome
What must be the inertia of a thousand suns
Collapsed past the point of darkness,
That fly through our bodies and are gone.
So can I "just move on"?
Every morning I groan, I can't think straight,
Every idea seems ridiculous
When I'm so bound by indecision to a hideous mess
When I finally meet my death
And I don't know if I want to, it's the same story
I'm tired of even repeating the same thing
To a a tiny audience who mill in shame
And wish they could help, but at the same time,
I feel I'm rightfully to blame -
I must have done something, I was hit with
Every frivolous game bearing a straight face
But wait, I'm feeling human once again
Guess I'll make a go of it now?
This is so different-
Point me at he sky and tell me how.

No one
Should have to journey so far into fear
That he becomes desperate.

No one should hear his own mind
Saying only
Horrible things, always.

Or be afraid of his dreams so deeply
That sleep provides no relief,
No chance to reset;

It just keeps going
Until that voice drives you mad
Or you unattach if you can.

No one
Should have to face the decision.

That awful, ugly decision.

But I am alone
Profoundly.

And cold in my heart.

If I can nevermore
Run this mile,

I wish I could gain my feet again
And stumble to the finish line
For some kind of closure.

Leonardo, that old trickster!

First he's got John the Baptist relaxing amidst the roots of a tree in a perfect imitation of the Roman god of pleasure and excess, Bacchus. Next he's got him as an infant actually blessing Jesus Christ whilst Mary and and the archangel Uriel use a little hand-signalling to seemingly foretell his doom (beheading).

Always obsessed with The Baptist, that guy, and paganism, and... well, most things that were contrary to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Always exploring alchemy and Hermeticism, taking money to paint commissions for the true believers in the religion he despised and giving them back heretical pieces they never seem to realize were such.

Clever, gay, Leonardo.

1,500th Post.

Yay.

****

News & Tidbits.

I'm looking to move my blog to a better host, or else try to figure out CSS (style sheets) + XHTML so I can use my own fonts and large-element formatting (like what appears in the sidebars, the width of the blog, a better archiving system for easier access to past posts, and so on). Anyone knowing anything on the subject please contact me with advice. As usual I'm always doing my own research, but it would be nice to talk with someone who's already macheted their way through this before.

In particular I want to be able to host multimedia files of all types without too much fuss, to specify my own screen fonts (or descending list, if need be), and to control as many aspects of the look and feel of the blog as possible, so it doesn't look like anyone else's out there, and so I can do many more interesting things with it, including have music, video, interactive bits (flash or flex), beautifully and precisely laid out and presented text and pictures that don't appear just vertically in a bland roll call... an innovative navigation system...

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I'm starting a water-only fast today. In fact I've already started. I'm going to purify myself and lose weight and see God. Speaking of which...

****

Someday I'll post on pre-Abrahamic religions and the nearly universal presence of the Goddess and Godman (duality) that existed across "pagan" cultures worldwide. Osiris, Mithra, Dionysis, Lucifer in the true meaning of his name, Litlith, Nepit, ah hell...

Isis ~ Demeter ~ Arinna ~ Yemaya ~ Diana ~ Inanna ~ Ishtar ~ Hecate ~ Brigid ~ Freyja ~ Nammu ~ Astarte ~ Sophia ~ AuLat ~ Maat ~ Minerva ~ Nut ~ Otohime ~ Hathor ~ Mawu ~ Aphrodite ~ Kanayama-hime ~ Luna ~ Kali Ma ~ Quan Yin ~ Selene ~ Kore ~ Amaterasu ~ Pandora ~ Medusa ~ Nathor ~ Venus ~ Gaia ~ Funadama ~ Sedna ~ Iris ~ Corn Mother ~ Dana ~ Kannon ~ Cerridwen ~ Irene ~ Macha ~ Rhiannon ~ Kishimo-jin ~ Hel ~ Mary ~ Benzai-Ten ~ Frigga ~ Vinca ~ Lady of the Beasts ~ Uba ~ Rowan ~ Artemis ~ Ma ~ Ki ~ Gabjauja ~ Lhamo ~ Amentet ~ Gabija ~ Laka ~ Selene ~ Allat ~ Uac Rapito ~ Pavasiya ~ Lahar ~Zemyna ~ Securitas ~ Sechat-Hor ~ Pandara ~ Saps ~ Rheia ~ Ma-Zu ~ Ran ~ Quiritus ~ Prende ~ Kishi-Bojin ~ Flora ~ Mayahuel ~ Chup-Kamui ~ Mafdet ~ Diti ~ Fauna ~ Aradia ~ Kaminari ~ Vaisgamta ~ Atabey ~ Pales ~ Zeme pati ~ Kaupuole ~ Rasyte ~ Marisha-Ten ~ Etc...

And these are just the female names for the duality of spirit. People used to value body, spirit, and mind equally, and aspire toward transcendence, not obedience.

Don't get it twisted up and believe in monotheistic religions who use these universal stories of morality for their own ends, villifying noble concepts about life and being, and making you forget your own equal place in the universe to bow in servitude to an overbearing God who demands your loyalty and constaint praise.

The world has literally gone mad since the old days, the old ways. The cities of Babylon have spread and brought a strange plague into the minds of men. Sophia has been forgotten. Knowledge lost. Are we bound to 'discover' it again only through science, and destroy ourselves in order to renew the cycle, or is there some way out this time?

****

I'll bet you never learned about the Book of Enoch in Sunday School.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JThSrbJTyXg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek4F65iqQBk

Nor did you most likely learn about Gnosticism or Hermeticism, since these are "heresies" - but were once doctrines believed by just as many people as today's bizarre orthodox Christianity (even in its several forms).

In many or most ways, the ancient pagan 'beliefs' in natural forces personified were much more sophisticated than today's monotheistic-literalist's closed-minded views are. They understood (at least the 'initiates' or 'priests' did) that the antropomorpism they spoke about was metaphorical and, in essence, this was "the secret" at the heart of most 'mystery cults/religions' (i.e., paganistic beliefs) of ancient times - the revealing that the underlying order of Being was a natural world which operated according to mathematical and physical law - hence the great prevalence of astronomy and sacred geometry amongst the most educated members of these societies (think of the Egyptians or the Mayans or the Pythagoreans and the importance they places on numbers, directions, and time). The pantheons of gods these societies trotted out were for the masses to perhaps take literally, to assuage their fears about crops or illness or whatever, but the gnosis/sophia (Greek words meaning knowledge/wisdom) gained as far back as Sumer and Egypt and passed on to Greece and India and China and everywhere else, was that there were in fact NO gods, that the concept of divinity was within us all, as knowledge to be understood or indeed literally incorporated through study and meditation.

Sound like anything we value today? Science maybe? Buddhism or relaxation tapes and introspection? Runner's high or psychotrophic drugs or Aldous Huxley's 'perennial philosophy'? These ideas were present at the very dawn of civilization, when men and women first put down roots, and who knows how much earlier, given that Goddess and Phallic figurines have been unearthed dating to the Mesolithic at a time with modern human were still sharing Europe with Neandertals. Dualistic spiritualism recognizing our place within the environment in a real, natural sense without the gibberish of "parents in the sky" was the norm, it would seem. Animals aren't religious, and neither were ancient humans, though paradoxically as their technological sophistication grew, their belief in themselves dwindled, and they sought gods for answers to questions now had and could no longer provide satisfactory answers for themselves. It's possible that specialization of labor had much to do with this, as it led to a loss of feeling in control of one's own life. Think of the average cubicle dweller today - it's no wonder he or she might find solace in going to Church on Sunday (as long as it didn't overlap a critical football game), just to try to make sense of it all and have some peace of mind. With the power to live all aspects of life fully having been wrested from us, by allowing ourselves to be marginalized to the point of absurdity, we have perhaps lost our very sense of purpose in the process.

But the point is, the big experiment of Abrahamism: literal monotheism under a very male deity called either Yahweh, God, or Allah, has perverted the whole intellectual tradition of mankind and any progress toward understanding our place within nature ever since it began to take hold. It's very frustrating that it's only been in the past three or four hundred years, and even then only in certain shifting enclaves, that this lost wisdom eschewing supernaturalism or at least bringing it down to the level of pan-humanism and not placing it forever beyond our grasp in the province of a vengeful, special King, has finally seen the light of day again (at least in the West; the East has had a much more successful experience at beating away humiliating monotheism, though supersition is not free from that part of the world either).

Imagine if Jewish temples and synagogues had never existed; if Roman Catholicism had never existed; if Islam had never existed. With so many minds freed from preoccupation with that nonsense, how much more enlightened as a species would we be? How much better stewards of our planet would we be, understanding that this is it, there ain't no afterlife where everything is green and wonderful, so we'd better take care of the plants and animals and air and water of THIS world and make the most of THIS life. Or... maybe everyone would just end up godless capitalists and still act foolishly. Sometimes it's hard to believe in any evolved altruism in our species except for the odd individual who is truly selfless. Maybe if bioengineering is to not be scary and stratifying and the ultimate downfall of humanity, we will change our genes for aggression and exploitation into ones of compassion and humility.

Don't worry, it's ok.

Life may seen Absurd, philsopsophically,
But don't ever lose your sense of the absurd,
Humanistically. Don't be afraid to laugh
At the darkness; I've yet to hear it laugh back.

Life might be absurd, and there may be no meaning,
But in that case we're right back where we were
In the beginning, with no higher brain functions
To ask all these ridiculous questions.

Sophia.

Find out for yourself
I can can only guide you
Point you to the start of the way
Which ends in what?
Only the madness of restrictive reason
At the end of the day.

All you have to learn is inside you.

So find it for yourself
I can't even show you
What I know, because I don't even know
Which end is up,
Only that the reason inside of madness
May one day bestow the certainty that

All the gods you need are within you.

For you are a divine thing,
Not flesh and bone but light
And in pure light there is
No good and no evil
Only the separation of colors
Which has created our striven world
A riven world which can only
Be united by returning to white
That sacred light.

For you are a divine thing,
Not made by gods but a god yourself
Entombed in a prison of matter.
And Einstein made clear,
And The Buddha made clear,
And Hermes made clear,
And the phraoahs made clear,
And the Akkadians made clear,
And the Greeks made it all so clear:

There is no matter which is not radiance,
When understood and transformed.

At the speed of light we were formed
And time cannot touch us. It is unreal.
But gnosis is real; becoming is real.
Initiate yourself by looking deeper!

Think for yourself and resist the deep sleep
That mankind has set upon his being
We are luminous things, interconnected
As each wave is to the sea. See.

Don't simply believe me,
Or take anyone else's word for it.
Don't believe, know.
Steep yourself in religion, and in the sciences
And in philosophy, and then just walk outside
And in the sunlight, grow.

And begin to awake from that dark
Dream of duality.
And you will find your perennial philosophy.
And you may indeed meet your Sophia
At long, long,
Long, long, long last.

(JMS 2009)

From the

"Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out"

Department.



This is priceless.

These primates are just as entertaining.

This flowchart sums it up pretty well.

Lastly, um... Yeah.

We'll miss ya, big guy.