Colorless Green Ideas

Someone said to me, if you have enough time to write this blog - why don't you have time to do X , Y and Z. Its 7:15 am. I woke at 5:50, played WoW for 10 minutes. Almost levelled (damnit I am good. for you WoW fans out there, the Green Hills of Stranglethorn can be Found in the AH... tee hee) . Then at 6:10 I woke the children. I jumped into bed with them. I have noticed that if you have nice cozy english bed on a cold morning, and you ask a little one to roll over they will roll over. Which means that at a certain time they are already half awake before you wake them. How I got them up in five minutes is my secret though. Cooked them oatmeal. Brown sugar. Cinnamon. Apples for my little girl. Juice. Helped them get ready. Clean clothes. Brushed teeth. Brushed hair. My son will lose that tooth today: note to self time to get out the dental floss and pull that sucker out. Secret note to self: make sure the Tooth Fairy has a silver dollar. .. Who are you callin' a fairy...

There are days when I can connect, one two, maybe three or four of them. Days when I can connect one. Somtimes I cannot see the constellations. Just a breathtaking expanse of stars. Then other times. I can't even see those. Tomorrow, my ten year old daughter who has posted seven straight semesters of straight "A"'s will go to her teacher and ask him to tell her what a mathematical proof is all about. I remember algebra showed up in my life when I was in like. the seventh grade? And so here comes another dot to connect. We can simply answer the question algorithmically - 'a proof is a bla bla bla'. If you truly want her to learn how to connect the dots herself - send her to the place first where she can get some traction. So I sent her to her teacher. He will have problems that can make her stronger. I consider yesterday fairly unproductive despite getting a few things done. It just seems like a game of connect the dots sometimes.

There is something that happens, not very often. A flash of green upon the sea. Sailors have spoken of it for years. No one knows why it happens. I saw it once. I was sitting on my surfboard. There weren't alot of waves that morning, mostly really small shorebreak. I had paddled out about 200 meters from the shore. It was dawn. It started out as a beam of light that shot out from the horizon and lifted up into the sky. It was definitely green. It was bright , yellowish green. The beam looked at first like a searchlight, only from a search light that was shooting straight across the water to me . I remember it lifted up from the ocean and then slammed down on the water and the entire horizon was flooded with bright green. Sometimes people report seening bright bands of light. A.A. Carnegie , of the SS. Patrick Stewart , cruising in the Gulf of Oman, reported the following to the Royal Meterological Society Quarterly Journal, 32:280, 1906 from his ship's log: ...

Its amazing how racism takes so long to die. Last night a person who considers themself a die-hard progressive and I had a discussion as we were taking care of our horses together. He said "the reality is that only six percent of white males in the South Carolina primary say that will support Obama". And so he says that Obama is finished, theres no way he's going to win. And then he said I can understand - "I work at the airport and they really expect service. " Who is this person .. "they" ? .. It dawned upon me ever so slowly that he was saying that the black people are "they" and that white people are upset about them. ?! Did I hear correctly?! My response was, "Shane this is not about race this is about class. South Carolina's textile industry was pole-axed by the Chinese. The black people were just on the receiving end of the bad news for that last industry downturn and they are voting from their wallet". And to ...

Congratulations, if you're reading this you are hereby authorized to go and kick some ass today. Today is Kick Ass Day. What, you might say - does this involve? Why. Its simple. Today you will go out and wail on everything that isn't done. You will not answer your phone, instead you will contact manage for either uplevelling your position (because, damnit, your skills are fading - you have skills - sharpen them up!) or .. you will make sales calls and close the deal. If there is anything left to do with your product development, you will do it. You will get your employees, or those that you manage, in a row. You will get them working productively. If you have any debts to clear, you will clear them. If you're in a more humble and likely more important position, the kids will be straight, clean and you will do something great with them today. They will be glossy haired and bright eyed. You will get everything straight that needs to be straight. Only then you are au...

They call wednesday "hump day" because its the middle of the week, and you're supposed to cruise over it and coast until Friday. When I worked for the phone company I remember Thursday seemed to be the day you wanted to have everything done. I always enjoyed Thursdays there - it was a tradition to try to get everything you needed to get done for the week done by that date. Fridays sometimes involved group lunch or something that took a bit more than an hour out of the day that you would not have otherwise spent with the group. In college a person named Jon Hoffman was one of my mentors. Jon was into medeival stuff, and he and I would spend time together . He lived in the apartment below me. He smoked a long pipe, made of clay, and he would occasionally snip it off at the end. He would blow rings in the air and they would just hang there in the candlelight. He was a Grad student in the Physics department. We were both members of a club called "the society for...

Sometimes they just fall out of the air... (Peter Gabriel)

I dont know why she tried to kill herself but she did. The water was cold. When they saw her missing they assumed she was dead. I ran to the dock . There she was naked face down. One thing I do remember. The water was cold but not so cold that the kelp wasn't growing. Thank god you can't feel the temperature of the water, when you jump in. When you dream. I remember everyone else stood around feeling sorry. I jumped in and pulled her out and then pushed the water out of her lungs. Just as naturally as you and I are talking to each other she gets pissed off at everyone around and then I realize. Hey. You're upset but you're alive. We wrap her in a blanket. And now that I remember that I also remember there was a suitcase that was trying to be smuggled across the border. And we opened it. And inside was what I was looking for , and a real gun. And a paintball gun. It was still loaded. =) You are lucky you weren't in my dream. P.S. My son got a Phlat Ba...

I have been playing around with these different visions of the female. In my free time, ferreting out visions of the feminine from Wow, SL, CL, all over. Unlike the typically male approach, females are seeing the net as a form of social network and they're out there now enjoying themselves in disembodied form. Or embodied into some kind of ideal. I was fairly curious about it for a while. And I was taking notes. The last piece of the puzzle came to me last night. I finally met her last night in my dream. Her face was serenity itself. But I didn't see it at first. We were both in class . I thought I knew who she was. Before I met her. It was pretty exciting. I wanted to meet her. I was happy when she took a seat next to me. Then when I turned to look into her eyes . I noticed she was several people all at once.Part one, part another. It was scary. I didn't know who you were but I knew your name. I wanted to know who you are. You sat behind me but in that strange way...

Sleep Sleep tonight And may your dreams Be realized If the thunder cloud Passes rain So let it rain Rain down on him So let it be So let it be Sleep Sleep tonight And may your dreams Be realized If the thundercloud Passes rain So let it rain Let it rain Rain on him Bono Hewson

I am trying to cut it down to one post a day so that I can do that guest writing thing (actually need to get some work done as/well). I have a daughter and a son. And today for the first time in their lives they played in the snow. I wish their mom was there to see it. It was beautiful. It actually took awhile to settle in. At first we went outside and played in the snow. Then we had to bring the horse in (damnit!), so we did that and the horse was happy to be in her warm stall with a bit of feed for the night. But on the trip down my son thought she would get the joke if he balled up a great big snowball and ... bang! hit her right in the head. I lit the fire and made them soup and sandwiches; the difference between little girls and little boys gets pretty apparent after that. Girl: nice warm soup, gets into the film (we don't have cable , so I'm always hunting for films - "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" .. good film (cheesy version but I am very proud of her to ...

The last British wolf was killed in 1743. There are no wolves left on the Isle of Britain. The last Bali tiger was killed in 1937. There are no tigers left in Indonesia and Bali. Since the year 1500, 748 species have ended their existence here. In geological time this is an amazing rate of exinction. The extinction rate on the planet is now at the highest level in recorded or geological history. This rate has spiked dramatically in the last 50 years. The only event ever to come close than this in the geological record was the K-T event. This event occurred 65.5 million years ago. The last time an extinction rate was happening at the rate that it is happening right now. Was when this happened to our planet : The last of one out of every two animals you see before you - excluding scavengers of human trash - will die in the next 93 years and you will never see them again. The current exinction rate projects 1 out of every two species will be gone by the year 2100. To...

TGN1412, also known as CD28, contains a highly unusual property for an antibody medicine: instead of blocking a cell's reaction, it causes a stimulation. For this reason, even a small dose might provoke a cascading, catastrophic calamity. Antibodies stay in the body for months. They can't easily be removed, even through multiple blood transfusions. Experimental drugs are typically tested on laboratory tissue samples or animals before they're considered "safe enough" to be injected into humans. TGN1422, on the other hand, was monoclonal antibody, designed to target a specifically humanoid protein Read more .

Albert Hoffman, when he discovered LSD , remembered of his first experience with it his bike ride coming home from his laboratory in Switzerland. He remembered pedaling and pedaling, but seemingly getting nowhere. He didn't drop acid much more after that - his idea , as many chemists of his age commonly practiced - was simply to taste what he had created. It was a common test of acidity or baseness before the era of automation. When others asked why he did not continue to do acid, he said simply that what it brought out in him was what was already there. My chemistry professor in high school was a prankster. We would coat thin layers of kerosene over sodium flash and write notes to the art teacher down the hall. The kerosene would be layered so that its vapor pressure would evaporate at the moment she would take the note or just before and the note would explode into flames and everyone would laugh. We enjoyed chemistry, some of us enjoyed learning - he was perceptive enough...

Gor began by speaking of evil in both the individual and collective, reconciling its presence in symbolic dark. What about this idea - suppose "I put on my fluffy slippers +before+ I go into the room .. what can live there in the dark.." and then not unlike the book "The Wave" - that identification with the dark can be a banner as it was to those high school kids who , in the book - became progressively more evil. That power is one of both control and purpose - Hitler appealed to his constituents in a form of nationalistic pride - the cynical machine of modern politics utilizes fear to force Americans into a frame of reference - that pushes us to think outside of our mortality - and create a sense of purpose and ideology - that can often mask a darker purpose. The idea of "trading stamps" as a metaphor for that form of rubber stamp response that does not defeat evil but legitimize it in a form of talking heads response (see also Faux News, and the tw...

The grease pencil tethered to the slate, drifted next to him .. the edge that cut my rope came from a crystal i speak quietly to myself in the dark bubbles floating up to the cave ceiling the water clear, cold and pure the smallest ones like diamonds I remember from my training that I should rise no faster than this smallest bubble I am writing with the worn edge of a grease pencil in small letters my dive watch says 9:42 am I am in trouble looks like the cord was cut I think it was crystalline.. strange.. this rope is strong and soft.. It spun from my reel .. and now here in this underwater cave man this place looks just like that spaceship in that film "alien" strange about the end of this rope pretty cleanly cut wonder how.. (blurred) I cannot find my way home my air is gone ..I feel strangely calm (we cannot read this part ) .. to my children .. (smeared lettering) .. I only entered this far because I saw..(indecipherable) .. ...

First, it helps to sort of visualize what really happened with Benazir. The location where she was shot, was a stronghold of Pervez Musharraf. And also a predominantly military city - a city not very dissimiliar in many ways to Arlington, Va. or even, perhaps, Washington DC. Barack Obama is a strong opponent of the Bush administration, which is similiar to the Musharraf administration in at least the fact that it came to power illegitimately (without a proper vote count of the people) , has been largely ineffective in its war on terror , and uses fear to nationalize and ideologue its people. The state of emergency that Pervez Musharraf declared to stabilize his country was reported as military move against destabilizing forces in the region. In fact, Musharraf used the state of emergency to remove judges from power, harass journalists and arrest students. This is very similiar to the Bush administrations repeated attempts to replace Attorney Generals in states where investiga...

I am going to have a very busy saturday today... alot of work.. oh well. That's life I guess. Lots of things I have to get done today; mostly work related. I work usually half days on saturday I will be lucky if today tops out under 10 hours. But we feel fine . =) I am a good manager I think. Lets test it out today.

In the howling wind comes a stinging rain See it driving nails Into the souls on the tree of pain From the firefly, a red orange glow See the face of fear Running scared in the valley below Bullet the blue sky Bullet the blue sky Bullet the blue Bullet the blue In the locust wind comes a rattle and hum Jacob wrestled the angel And the angel was overcome You plant a demon seed You raise a flower of fire See them burning crosses See the flames higher and higher Bullet the blue sky Bullet the blue sky Bullet the blue Bullet the blue This guy comes up to me His face red like a rose on a thorn bush Like all the colors of a royal flush And he's peeling off those dollar bills Slapping them down One hundred, two hundred And I can see those fighter planes And I can see those fighter planes Across the mud huts where the children sleep Through the alleys of a quiet city street You take the staircase to the first floor Turn the key and slowly unlock the doo...

I waited for the day they would lower the shade of the color of the tombstones in my neighbors eyes from elmo to clear , eliminate . fear I wanted us to return to the country we had known before and stop being forced to focus on things beyond ourselves to rejoice in laws about sidewalks and better schools But they never did and that left me here, with my laptop and socks , here at hartsfield trying to find the word that rhymes with orange instead I got a paying job as the barcode tattoo on your arm on the right, a devil with a socket in his head and the left is an angel with wings and sad eyes and underground we do it in the basement just listen for that bass kick See. If I were the president I'd kill him with my bible maybe even use nanotechnology like linus and lucy on adrenaline I'd spiral black clounds of dust powered by transmission and with horror he would discover the lump in his arm is ADSX and people on the river are happy to ...

John Kerry just endorsed Barack Obama. Ok. Thats one more person. One more vote. My favorite bumper sticker of 2004 was "I voted for John Kerry before I voted against him. Seriously this will not help Edwards. Hillary is looking strong into Nevada. But the real contest is in Michigan. The GOP. If they frag there, they will be a rolling nightmare. I think what we have here is something like Hillary strengthening up to take the full nomination but I back Barack Obama. He's got a difficult job ahead of himself. I think he's up to it. So does John Kerry. Thats cool. Maybe we can get little packets of catch-up with obama's name printed on them. If Hillary takes Nevada things will get tough. Why is Obama skipping it? What is he doing in South Carolina. More delegats maybe. Ah well. Here we go.

I am the victim today of a small act of kindness. It totally up-ended my day, which started out with a pretty rude mail from someone I didn't know. As usuall I barrelled through most of my day. Finished at least one relevant thing I had to do. Sadly however that single rude mail messed up so much of my day. So I was pretty down much of the day. This person that mailed me really does get off on people getting hurt. However I set today up to be a potion festival for my friends. I had been collecting herbs up in WoW for weeks now and stockpiling them. So I moved into an apothecary and started at it on my lunchbreak. Thats when I received the small act of kindness that changed my day. Some completely anonymous night elf sent me a gift. The mail she sent said "acts of kindness always begin small" and it was sent from anonymous. and signed "huntress". You would not believe how much that cheered me up. I guess I am really , in the end. An optimist. I really b...

I am thinking about taking a guest writing gig over at "Reliable Politics". This is probably due to my blistering observations about New Hampshire, no doubt. Obama placed a strong second to Clinton , in NH. I think the kid will go all the way. Hillary has a problem in that there is 40 percent of the electorate that will just not vote for her. Richardson sent out a mail saying "the contest from here", which if you read between the lines, is a standard mail that most candidates send before they shut down , to the hardcore faithful who will donate even when the campaign is heading for the tank. He states that he has support out west, and in the southwest, which makes him a strong running mate but even stronger as a member of the announced cabinet since either clinton will VP for Obama, or Obama will VP for clinton. But in the end, this is now a two person race on the Democratic side and I cast my lot with Obama. Always have. As soon as its done, I will rededica...

Hillary Clinton is leading now in New Hampshire, with 15 percent of the districts reporting. The lead is about 4 percentage points. Also with 13 percent of the districts reporting, many of the media have called NH for McCain. The net effect of the Obama miracle is that it has given him a strong lead in all major polls, and it has effectively knocked John Edwards out of the race. It is a two person race at this point. Record turnout. Amazing. This is why I am into politics. The American people really do decide their own fate. I am so proud of the watchdogs. So proud in fact that I became one. The only thing to worry about when your guy is losing is whether or not its fair. Which it is. NH seems to be stoked about Hillary at this point. I think Hillary will be a great VP.

NH Turnout for Barack Obama is so high that precincts are running out of ballots, and lines are all the way around the block. Iowa's early numbers being up 76% were a precursor to the wave. Barack Obama has always represented to me, the kind of person that could really catch a wave and ride it. He owes his early victory to a caucus of people willing to break the tie, who are anti-war, fiscal conservative, social liberal independents. The indie vote is running so fast to Obama that Romney may be able to catch the benefit of it by losing the NH indie GOP vote for McCain and having the rest of the GOP collect behind Romney for the win. The GOP race will be exciting. The Democratic Race is just about over. And its over for the so called republicans and "conservatives" too. We will soon see an end to the incompetence that paraded itself as republicanism for the last eight years and a return of our country to its rightful place in the world and the world economy. Americ...

To do list today: Help Obama get elected (anyway I can) Spank Mike Huckabee ( ex evangelical - he likes it ) Make money Oh man what a day. This is going to be a busy day for me.. I am going to party so hard after today, all that work done.. Cool thing we did in Iowa, huh? Isn't it nice to have a candidate that isn't on the take from lobbyists? True. True.

pampero. grace. halcyon

The first rule of an abusive relationship is that the abuser usually blames the victim. Sometimes they even undergo elaborate twists of logic and reason to get the victim to be responsible for everything.. So this doesn't come as much of a surprise to me.

I'll never forget the day this beautiful woman right out in the office said I was "sneaky": I didn't know I was sneaky: I didn't feel sneaky: but there are mechanisms below our mechanisms, so I assume that lady was right: living with that has not helped my progress in the world, if there is any such thing, progress, I mean: also it has hurt my image of myself: I have used up so much fellow- feeling on the general - all of which I have forgotten specifically about, as have the fellows - no offices , no clear images or demonstrations - I don't understand what that one remark holds its place ungivingly in me: and now to talk about it, admit to the world (my reading public, as it happens) that I am scarred by an old, old wound about to heal and about to bleed: this may do confessional good but I will no longer appear perfect to others: conceivably, that could be a good thing: others may be scarred, too, but who wants to be like them:...

"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind" - Bertrand Russell See? Three Delta III was not just Ted's idea. Its fundamental. Damn good high school cult, last this far and still be fun. Note to self: Attend High School Reunion. ..... ah... one. more thing... I just want you to know today. Kinky sex is the cat's ass. I am being very succinct today. Aren't you proud of me?

So in the first caucus we have Barack Obama taking Iowa from the strength of a youth vote ( over 1 in 5 caucus goers were 17-29 and they overwhelmingly broke for obama) and on the GOP side, evangelicals ( 28-42 age demographic) broke for Mike Huckabee. As I posted earlier, the turnout is 25% which is more than double the standard turnout. Obama takes 58% of this vote, and its all chips on the table and call for the Clinton campaign who is now driven down to third place. That said, I believe Clinton is Obama's obvious choice for VP. Iowa is a trip. A total trip. Of course now the rumours are going to start that Obama will do a deal to make Richardson Secretary of State. It really blows my mind sometimes how difficult it is to get a truly progressive agenda accomplished, in either party. Huckabee seems to be the obvious choice for someone who is comfortable with the GOP trendline for bringing fear into the equation and forcing voters out of their comfort zone into things that l...

Just so you know the whole thing about Iowa for caucus voting is really pretty simple and the results are going to be fun today as well. There have been all these rumours that we Richardson folks have been making deals with both Ron Paul and Obama supporters. Perish the thought. The Richardson camp , in a room of , say 100 voters, will need to get as much as 15 of them collected into a corner. Then they're counted down. If there are less than 15, then the group can split up and go where they want to. Its a game. A bit like that moment in "a beautiful mind" (ie, altruism is a strategy) where the candidate that they would go to, would not necessarily be the candidate that you would either ally to, or wish to pair up with in order to take out your immediate opponent. This is what Edwards did in 2004, when he sniped Kucinich supporters for a strong finish over Dean. Voter turnout should make a mark higher than 10%, remember this is a primary running today. If we top...

Prey animals are not supposed to know how to do this, are they? Hmm...

The day that my job will be about something other than putting out fires, I will be surprised. I would love to just power forward, in a routine, for this job, however, as CEO of a small company for 11 years - I am beginning to believe it will never happen. One thing I am grateful for, is that management has been simplified in the past few days or so, so that I'm really way more accountable to the shareholders and the result metrics are going to be alot easier to deal with and essentially, own up to. I am not good with gray area or dotted line report charts. I like things to be either on my shoulders or a flat organization chart where we are all working together at which point I will take a role in the team and hold onto it tightly. My main idea for this week, is to get everything done that I've been slacking off from Dec. 27th on and the three days or so before the 25th where my productivity just dropped to zero and I turned into an appetizers grazing machine. One brig...

At Nora's first post-divorce Labor Day bash there's a fluster and a fuss and a fidget in the fuchsia-bells. "Two fingers of sour mash, a maraschino cherry." "So the digit's still a unit of measurement?" "While midgets continue to demand a slice of the cake." "A vibrator, you know, that kind of widget." Now a ruby-throated hummingbird remakes itself as it rolls on through mid-forest brake. "I'm guessing she's had a neck-lift and lipo." "You know I still can't help but think of the Wake as the apogee, you know, of the typo." Like an engine rolling on after a crash, long after whatever it was made a splash by Paul Muldoon (the editor) Fiction: fiction@newyorker.com The Talk of the Town: talkofthetown@newyorker.com Shouts & Murmurs: shouts@newyorker.com Poetry: poetry@newyorker.com Its Jan. 3rd, a whole year has gone by this week. Lets get to work.