Fun Friday: Bad Reflections

To quote George Takei, Oh my!

This one will play with your mind for a bit

Newspaper fail

 

Not as badass as he thought when the mirror gets involved

 

 

I love this image, not exactly a reflection, but awesome

 

 

 

 

30 Days of Burning Man – Day 6, Playa Magic

30 Days of Burning Man – Day 6

This year there is a possibility that there will be a much higher percentage of newbies heading to the desert so I thought I’d spend the 30 days before the gates open throwing out some information, some images and a little bit of wisdom, advice and snark about the place I love so much. These posts will be generally directed at Burning Man virgins but hopefully some of you old dogs out there will contribute through comments or get some enjoyment out of them as well. So here we go.  .  I’ll include at least one photo from Burning Man each day and once a week I’ll do nothing but photos.  I hope the posts are sometimes helpful and also enjoyable, enjoy ~ ZD Blue

 

 

One of the questions I often get from people who have never attended Burning Man is, “what’s the big deal?”  If you’ve been it’s a laughable question.  So today a little something to give you a glimpse of what you’re in for a post I did awhile back on Playa Magic, enjoy ~ ZD Blue

http://zdeaconblue.wordpress.com/2010/09/27/burning-man-playa-magic/

July Poetry, Day 1 – Bukowski

July Poetry, Day 1 – Bukowski

So last year for the month of June I did a poetry month and it was a lot of fun, I posted 30 poems in 30 days.  This year, I’m a month later so I decided to up the ante a bit and do both a poem and an image each day.  I will post some of my own words but for the most part I’m using other poets, some well-known, some who will be utterly new to all of you.  Please provide comments and feedbacks on the poems and images you like.  A lot of the photos will be mine or from another photographer I shoot with from time to time. 

In digging around to find poems to publish for this month I found a lot of poetry I hadn’t read before, some really amazing stuff in my opinion.  I’ve also included some of the masters and my favorites, Neruda, Poe, McWilliams and of course the master Mr. Charles Bukowski which is where we will start today, enjoy ~ ZDB

Bukowski’s Grave – photo by Z Deacon Blue

 

 

THE ALIENS
from The Last Night Of The Earth Poems

By Charles Bukowski

you may not believe it
but there are people
who go through life with
very little
friction of distress.
they dress well, sleep well.
they are contented with
their family
life.
they are undisturbed
and often feel
very good.
and when they die
it is an easy death, usually in their
sleep.

you may not believe
it
but such people do
exist.

but i am not one of
them.
oh no, I am not one of them,
I am not even near
to being
one of
them.
but they
are there

and I am
here.

 

Mormon Cultists versus Christians for the Presidency of the United States

At the value voters summit this weekend, once again so-called “value” voters have once again demonstrated that intolerance is one of their core values.  Pastor Robert Jefress in his introduction of Rick Perry worked in a solid dig at Romney and his cult follower status as a Mormon.  In case you’d like to think it was misinterpreted you can read the article below where he reaffirms and defends his comment although he tried to put an intellectual spin on it:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/09/baptist-pastor-defends-cult-description-mormonism-still-backs-romney-over-obama/

This sets up an interesting question for the upcoming election if it’s Romney vs Obama, particularly south of the Manson-Nixon line, yes that’s sarcasm so save the Mason-Dixon correction statements.  In all deference to Herman Cain who doesn’t believe there is any significant racism left in this country I have to wonder.  Who will southern evangelicals be more likely to vote for, a member of the Mormon cult or a black Christian?

 

The sky is falling, no really a satellite is coming down

So in general a satellite falling out of orbit is not a really big deal, the items burn up in the atmosphere or, given the earth’s surface area is almost 70% water, whatever pieces don’t burn up harmlessly scare the hell out of some fish.  It has seemed odd to me over the last couple of weeks that NASA has put out a lot of press concerning this latest satellite decommissioning.  At first I thought well there is one big piece that may not burn up, but more and more I became suspicious that they did the math and the United States looked like a likely crash down point for the satellite.  Well, this morning they announced it, looks like there is a decent chance Mr. satellite is coming to the good ole USA.  It is scheduled to touch down, a sweet term for a large piece of metal hurtling into the ground at a few hundred miles an hour, late Friday night or early Saturday morning. 

Most likely this leads to nothing but there is a small chance of it hitting a populated area or of giving some of us a really great light show, so if it’s clear where you are might be a nice night to sit out under a blanket and sky watch, stay tuned.

US possibly in satellite strike zone

Momentary Food (Monopole Pizza, Burning Man & Mountain House)

Momentary Food

I first learned about momentary food as an undergraduate at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Plattsburgh.  You see in the old days there was a great little place called the Monopole, and although it was a bar, the main attraction at the Monopole, was Monopole Pizza. 

 You see at midnight, one or even two AM after you had imbibed way too many dollar beers at Woodstocks for Midnight Buzz, you’d wonder over to Monopoles, stand in line, fish a crumpled dollar from your pocket and then buy a slice of pizza.  Usually, you’d have to wait for a fresh pizza from the oven, get your slice and then immediate bite into the slice, and just as immediately the sauce would squirt and burn the shit out of the roof of your mouth.  You’d jump around, drink some beer and then do it all over again, burning your mouth, again.  By the third or fourth bite either the pizza had cooled or the nerve endings in your mouth were so completely shot that they no longer recognized pain and you’d finish your slice of pizza, and happily start the long walk back to campus.

 At some point in every young student’s career at Plattsburgh, maybe on a sunny and balmy forty degree day in March, shorts on, having blown off afternoon classes to enjoy the heat wave, you’d say hey, let’s go to Monopole and get a pizza.  So you scamper downtown with a friend and get really excited.  At a buck a slice a whole pizza would cost twelve dollars but a whole pie is only eight bucks!  Saving four dollars in those days was a REALLY big deal.  So you got a beer and sat back and waited for your pizza, then it would come to your table in all of its steaming glory.  Being sober, you feel sophisticated because you know to wait a couple of minutes to let it cool down so you don’t burn your mouth.  Finally, with great anticipation, you bite into your first slice and completely understand the definition of momentary food and one other very important truth.

 Momentary food is the realization that a particular type of food is perfect within a certain moment,  outside of the parameters of that moment, the food tastes like shit.

The disappointment was unbelievable when this happened to me, being a big pizza fan I couldn’t believe I’d ever eaten this crap.  Then, thinking on it, you realize that wow, drinking alcohol really does impair your judgment (very important truth).  Not only does this explain why you eat Monopole pizza, but also clears up how I woke up in a lot of strange dorm rooms in those days.

One of the most common places you experience momentary food is while camping, including all manners of canned goods, snacks and freeze-dried meals.  All of us have some food that when you’re tired and hungry taste just awesome in camp.  My experience with this came in the form of Chef Boyardee beef mini-raviolis in a can, which I coincidentally discovered as an alternate to Monopole Pizza one night at a convenient store while walking home drunk in Plattsburgh.  As I was saying, in camp fabulous, but one night after work, tired and hungry and not wanting to cook.  I remembered I had a can tucked away and pulled it out, popped the top and sunk in a spoon.  That’s right, I eat these uncooked.   As I with mouth drooling anticipation sunk my teeth into the first bite I realized I had a disease, momentary food amnesia.

 Momentary food amnesia is a condition by which even though you have confirmed an item as momentary food, you once again try to eat it outside of the moment because you’re a dumbass.

 Given my in-depth experience with several various and assorted types of momentary food, as well as being the person who defined the term, I can say with great authority that Mountain House Beef Stroganoff is the definitive gourmet momentary food, to the point of actually removing itself from the category (and yes Mountain House, I will take a free case as payment for this endorsement, please deliver it before Burning Man).  The majority of the Mountain House stuff is great camp food, although most of it is definitely momentary food, try eating the damn freeze-dried ice cream when you’re not camping.  Also one side note, never, I mean never, under any circumstance buy or eat the Mountain House Pasta Primavera, it’s the last meal little Regan had before she got all green, wonky and head spinney in the Exorcist. 

However, the Beef Stroganoff is so damn good that you can come home from work, dig it out of the camping box, boil water and eat it right out of the bag and feel like it’s a home cooked meal.  If you want to really do it up, you can dump it into a bowl.  I can verify this friends, I did it tonight, and now I have to buy another bag for Burning Man.  Bon appétit!

Evidence of biological life in space

Since the 1960′s scientists have found the building blocks of biological life on meteorites, this has always been blown off as earth bound contamination, but now they have found these building blocks on samples that they are quite sure brought these materials with them.  This gives huge credibility to the theory of panspermia, check out the article below:

http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/11/dna-discovered-in-meteorites/?hpt=hp_c1

Fun Friday: Fun Theory and Singing Kids

So it’s been a really long week and I’m late getting this posted and had no pre-set idea what to post today, so I did what we all do these days when we don’t know something, I googled it, that’s right, googled fun and found a site called fun theory.   It looks at the ways in which organizations, governments etc… have changed people s behavior by making the more desired behavior, more fun than the alternative, pretty cool.  Most of you have seen this type of thing with the piano stairs video that bounced around the web and is included on the site, here’s the link, enjoy:

http://www.thefuntheory.com/

And finally today a video of some funny kids singing, I love the first one, it’s somehow utterly bizarre and adorable and the end of his song is the real payoff enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLkolY3DJ2g

Superbowl: A great commercial and votes for coach of the year

In case you’ve been living under a rock the Superbowl is this Sunday and the Pittsburgh Steelers and  Green Bay Packers will be playing between Budweiser Commercials.  I’m a Steeler fan so pretty biased about the outcome of the game and a bit of the coverage that has been going on, but to get you warmed up here is a link to one of the best commercials I’ve seen in years and it will premier during the game, I think every Star Wars fan and everyone with a 4-year-old boy will love this commercial so I have a feeling my friend Audrey’s going to really like this:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfmoms/detail?entry_id=82392

Now on to the serious thing, the football.  I think the two most deserving and best teams in the NFL are squaring off this week, I could have made a similar argument for the Ravens representing the AFC, but not the Jets, little Markie Sanchez needs to get some big boy pants before that is going to work out.

All the hype is almost over but one of the one story that I think has been worth the column space in the newspapers and blogs has been what both of these teams have over come.  Both of these teams due to injuries, suspensions, etc…have had a significant number of second string players and rookies stepping up to make these Superbowl runs possible.  Here are a couple of  links to articles that lay out all of the changes these teams have gone through:

The Packers

The Steelers

Now how do two teams get to this point in the season with all of these injuries and changes, simple, good coaching, no make that great coaching.  So when the votes were counted for coach of the year which of these fine gentlemen won, neither one, as a matter of fact neither coach got a single vote and that is pretty damn depressing.

Coach of the year

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 9,100 times in 2010. That’s about 22 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 126 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 22 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 33mb. That’s about 2 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was July 11th with 226 views. The most popular post that day was Anatoly Sagalevitch comments on BP Oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, beforeitsnews.com, bm.tribe.net, en.wordpress.com, and healthfitnesstherapy.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for anatoly sagalevitch, ufo announcement, ufo announcement 2010, anatoly sagalevitch bp, and sagalevitch.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Anatoly Sagalevitch comments on BP Oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico June 2010
10 comments

2

If this is true, BP may lead the United States into Depression June 2010
8 comments

3

Burning Man Disconnection September 2010
19 comments and 2 Likes on WordPress.com

4

Burning Man: Playa Magic! September 2010
7 comments

5

Big UFO announcement on Monday! September 2010