The bees come up from the apple orchard next door to die on our porch, as if they were simply exhausted from being whisked around from farm to farm as slaves to our surplus feeding habits.  Animals without choice sometimes simply choose to die.  I’d bet bees have “feelings” somewhere inside their little buzzing mammillary bodies.  Maybe they just can’t hack it anymore.

My understanding is that they’re eusocial, but vote individually on where to feed based on who makes the best sexy waggle dance symbolizing food direction and quality, and have bee quorums concerning when and where to move the hive.  Elections have consequences, as they say, so they are rather “picky” in their own little individual and species-specific manners.

We humans feel a need to enslave everything, from ourselves to mackerel to feed the formerly-wild salmon now bred in large ocean nets to friggin’ anti-biotic-resistant bacterial plasmids to run off our hot RNA strands for in situ sense and non-sense, and other sexy gene-jock what-not.  Yes, we purposely create anti-biotic resistant bacteria as slaves.  Please don’t forget to flame the lip of that beaker when you’re finished with that batch!  Thanks!  Wouldn’t want those little E. coli republicans to escape just any non-containment facility.

Bush’s fourth term is shaping up beautifully.  Republicans are a disgrace; Democrats a very similar, but publicly perceived lesser disgrace.  I sort of agree, but not really.  They are knocking off the same countries as Cheney, with vini vidi vici aplomb.  Plus sum; while ramping up internal power grabs.  Just like Dick!

Meanwhile, La Diggs, whom I like well-enough, hears the death rattle (more accurately “debt rattle”) of MOUs.  Hardy har har!  You fucking with me, girlfriend?  Has Europe escaped your attention?  They are scared to foreclose on Greece!, for all the CDS triggers.  Nevermind Spain and Italy.

Big Tent Democrat is a foregone conclusion on matters of vital interest.  He’s keeping his mouth shut until after November, at which point he’ll bank on being in the club.  Trust me, on this.  BTD is still in the club, to which neither you, nor I, nor driftglass belong; and speaking of driftglass…Let’s just say that Roman Polanski will never call him “pussycat” and cut his nose, because as formidable as he is, he doesn’t sniff around the right places anymore.  Jake “Mr. Gitts,” he no longer is.

Booman, is, of course, himself.  Probably has never “seen” the empire for what it is.  It’s hard to know what a “complete fool” is, being one myself.

Daily Kos: fukity fuk fuk fuk.

And there you have it.

Sorry to say, our friends are quickly/slowly drying up, like mortar between bricks: It sets over-night, then cures.

How radioactive is that fish in rads,

Let met pull out my Becquerel exchanger.

Whoa! That’s high.  Let me calculate lifespan

Against protein requirements.

The mercury dropped in the mouth of a dying day,

Not because a poet had died, but because

A poet had not lived.  Would Don Delillo

Fill the gap?  It seems not, here.

Jesus, the guy can write about small things,

A sparrowfall, Hitler studies, breath-mints,

the way his daughter held his hand, not

to cling, but to re-assure him, against himself.

How fragile.  How angry is the chimp?

I’ll ask you about that later.

ckm has so many gems, I feel like going on a looting spree six days a week!  But this one especially broke my moral restraints:

Irony: A restored copy of the Magna Carta, one of four bearing the seal of King Edward I in 1297, will be put on display in Washington, D.C.

Apparently, “the rights of Man” are owned by a billionaire philanthropist and distributed across the empire.  That’s fucking sucking priceless.

At one point in the “arts festival” at my 4th grade nephew’s parochial school, after much memorized traditional poetry and what-not, including “the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” musket-balls and all (I thought the sisters would go more Gerald Manley Hopkins-ish, Wreck of the Deutschland, the drowning nun christening her wild-worst Best,  or the many dappled things of Pied Beauty, or something, but I suppose the festival was pure Americana at heart), the kids sang, “Oh my darling, Clementine,” a story about a miner whose daughter falls down some gold-sluice, or something; he can’t swim and just watches her go under.  There are definitely “levels” to the grief contained in that little ditty, e.g., “Clementine’s” presumed narrator-lover and little sister can go Elvis themselves, with respect to the “grief aspect,” which I’m sure they did, and god bless, really, but “I’d help, but I can’t swim,” says Pops?  There is an obvious logic to his inaction, also, of course, which only adds to the grief.  I hear my nephew sing that song through the walls, and my Colbertian gut tells me that the Silesian Sisters knew exactly what they were doing (to the parents) when they taught the kids to sing that song about “roses fertilized by Clementine” to the big folk.  Just a guess.

I studied under the Gardners of “Washoe the chimp learns American Sign Language” fame.  For awhile, I even lived on the former Nevada divorce ranch where the chimps (including Tatu, Dar, and Mojo) lived, long after the chimps pulled stakes and moved to Washington, but “their signs” were all around, the chimp cabins full of toys, “robo-chimp” graffiti in barns, the tree-house, and pastures where the chimps threw rocks at the horses.

The Gardners told fantastic stories, including the coining of phrases by chimps, such as “listen-drink” for the alka-seltzer served one New Year’s Day.

Trixie once explained a great ape strength experiment employing a large garage door spring attached to a wall.  The gorilla put his pinkie into the bolt-hole at the end of the spring and stretched it out effortlessly.  The chimp grabbed on with both hands, feet against the wall, and managed considerable, yet considerably less distension than the gorilla.  The orangutan simply dismantled the apparatus, bolt by bolt.

Allen once described a troop of domesticated primates that had a vending machine (a kind of Skinner box, really) at its disposal.  Once the smaller, smarter guy figgered out how to operate the machine for treats, the bigger guy would just punch the smarter guy around, rather than watching and learning.

At some point was the story of “Basso,” the chimp at the Frankfurt zoo who could add numbers, or rather, point to the correct answers from choices painted on wooden plates when asked sums (auf Deutsch).  The experimenter was asked how Basso could do arithmetic, and he replied that of course chimps can’t do arithmetic!  He reads my mind.

Great stuff.  But the best thing they ever did for me was to disabuse me of the notion of the Law of Effect.  Now, go back to your wars of aggression and financial collapses.

That Jules Vernesy thing below is a telescope made by my great-grandpa back in 1936.  He was a machinist back in the olden days when people made stuff (aside from the usual wars of aggression, financial collapses, snarky blog comments).  Cool stuff that worked and lasted and made you go, “Huh.”  I didn’t know the man, but I knew his son, a dashing man enough in a tux (Cary Grant-ish) but when Granny was at his side “fuggeddaboutit” they were drop-dead handsome; also capable with his hands on boats, paintings (a very decent draughtsman), and according to the large nasty dagger he also left behind, apparently, Nazis; he seriously questioned, yelled from shore, who gave my brother and I “permission to go onboard” when we were shark-scared kids (pre-Jaws!) swimming out at Monomoy Island about thirty yards out.  Sharks! dude.  The friggin’ sharks gave us permission!

WHOISIOZ?  I dunno, but great stuff just seems to fall from his mouth, like he doesn’t even try; his application effort-ry-ness is nil, and he merely rains phraseology down upon the rest of us like Zeus’s embarassado’d forehead pudenda.  He’s like Tom Brady, La Binoche, Gore Vidal, Herman Melville, and Fred Flintstone rolled in one.  Mother effing fuck.  Who is like that?  It’s irritating to an orangutan to be so out-done, so out-laundered, out-smoked; it does make us interested, try harder, but it also makes trying harder, like playing the dude who keeps schwacking top-spinning baselines in the Australian Open.  “Orang” is being kind.    Vicki, please open can of paint!  The ecru!  Sure.   Now say, “cup!” but I can’t do that, dammit.  Chimps don’t speak; we sign in ASL.  Duh.

(X-posted from writingintheraw)

(listen to her actual interview here; obviously, this is nowhere near an accurate transcript; it’s merely “what I heard.”)

The song is in your body,

The song is in the world

The giant scheme of things

Unfolding faster than alarm bells

Global dimming, global warming

Flipping quasi-stable states

Feedback loops, uncertainties,

artificially inflated carrying capacity,

One giant Haiti, one fell schmoop.

Elbow room?  Undershoot.  

Absolutely horrible thing to say.

Energy, finance, and preparation

Not much people can do about it,

Enormous forces overwhelm;

Don’t dwell on Mental paralysis.

Nitrogen availability.   Soil fertility.  

Hard walls to hit.  

Industrial agriculture eats Seed capital.  

Permaculture is not optional.

Forces aligned against decentralization.

Wealth conveyance to the centers

preserving the unpreservable,

Non-existent Ponzi wealth disappearing overnight

Too many claims on too little wealth

Infinite re-hypothecation (whut?)

Squeeze the periphery for drops of blood.

Everyone reaching for the same chair

Peripheral pockets are being picked.  More to come.

The music stops.

Liquidity is pile of un-made choices

Trust horizon contracts

Rules favor the few

no longer in our interest

Adolf America Obama

Coercion, surveillance, kettling

Occupied heads cracked

from here to Tunisia

Occupy locales, locally

Trailers in driveways,

Homegrown food arrest warrants.

Existing central powers fight tooth and nail.

Living off-grid.  Raw milk.  Unprocessed

Human food.  Oppo research.  

We must do it, cross the river, all at once.

To get to the other side.

Crocodile infested waters.

the government holds you

while corporations rip your flesh.

Letting the first wildebeest die alone

Hurts us all.  

Animosity.  Right-wing hate radio.

Divisive political divides.

Unfocussed, vague, angry.

Misdirected blame, straw men.

Ponzi, ponzi, ponzi,

Predators and willing victims.

misdirected emotions make it harder,

rather than easier.

Forget top down solutions.

Demagogues, all.  Hitler, hitler.

Fear anger and fear.

unfocussed passion works against you.

Think.  Do.

Don’t let them take your money.

Navigate the appropriate challenge first.

Children, grandchildren.

The threat of the internet to hegemony

Survey from the highest mountain now.

Oh, yes, they will.  Shut down.  The net.

Knowledge.  Like-minded people.

The wealth of the world.

Get hold of it, download while you can.

Mega-upload of wealth:

Mordor picking-up steam

Dad kept his axes head-down in

a coffee can of water to keep the wooden

wedges wet so the axe heads wouldn’t fly

off when he’s “fixing things” in the ever-

less-forested regions of the world.

My brother bought him a solid iron axe

at the empty Sear’s store (where the attentive

and only clerk bummed a smoke), for Christmas.

You think Mom cared about his sorry

axes?  Hellz no.   We sons noticed

the unfit outrage, the abominable travesty,  

in the corner of the garage at

the cabin.  Geez, Dad, it’s a good thing

you had sons to look after.

Private academic publishers must die!

Hunter thinks Chris Dodd and the Motion Picture Association of America are corporate parasites for trying to shut-down the internet.  And he’s right, but they are not the only corporate parasites in town these days infringing on the public welfare.  Basically, big scientific publishers want government to pay-wall all publicly-funded scientific research.  

The Research Works Act’s complete bullshit title runs thusly,

“To ensure the continued publication and integrity of peer-reviewed research works by the private sector.” -H.R. 3699[1]

but should more accurately be entitled,

“To ensure extraction of utterly parasitic publisher’s profits completely at taxpayer expense, while strip-mining knowledge from the world and causing needless, heedless damage to the public’s health and welfare in order to profit, profit, profit a few private individuals.”

Thanks for selling us our research, you blood-sucking, segmented worms.