This is a test of the emergency text entry method- had this been a real emergency (it is) this signal would have been followed by news and official information. This message will not repeat. We repeat- this message will not repeat. See below for some news. It's probably old news- someone else has surely millennia since written the same thoughts, but they struck me and now I turn them loose to strike you. Or not. You could duck, cover and/or run, but you wouldn't do that, would you? I hope you would if you felt like it. Why be proper if proper ain't right? Anyway, see below. If you get rich thanks to them, give me whatever royalties you can afford that haven't already been paid to everyone with prior claim to the idea(s). Or don't. See how easy-going I can be when I feel like it?

Note- everything below this line is below, as mentioned above.

There are but four things necessary to great art:

One must wish to share, or at least to present, a conception.

One must have the means to execute the work, and the energy to do so with passion, precision and despatch; failing these, one must be willing to sacrifice sole credit and enlist aid.

One must avoid entanglements arising from public and critical notice without offending the target of the art, which means everybody.

One must expect and accept obscurity- that is one should be content to live as though the work of art had never been realized.

And so it fell out unto him, for the people trampled him in the gate and he died.
King James Bible Kings II Chapter 7

If you want to read the story of which the above is the punch line, follow the little red link. It's a quick, easy read of about twenty verses. One of my Gideons Bibles says measures of such and such shall be sold for so many pieces of silver- the other that seahs ... shall be sold. So in this case, a measure is 6.659274893 dry quarts. I don't know which of the two printings is older, but I would expect that modernity demands something more specific than a measure. The printing which uses seahs also changes a lord into an officer, and takes some of the starch out of the writing by removing medieval turns of phrase of the sort which gladden a heart like mine. Don't ask me why- I just like the baby talk; I was pleased to find that the Gideons Bible website still uses the older, and more pleasingly archaic, text. The only reason I read this story at all was because the final sentence as printed above caught my eye and my fancy. But that's not what I want to talk about.

First, it seems that not only were the food and goods taken from the Syrians in this God-assisted victory to be sold to a famine-stricken people, presumably by their own king, but the prices for this wicked gouging were set by God. If that doesn't make you think about religion in general and the God of Moses in particular, you ain't thinking. Then there's the matter of murder. The sassy- and worse, doubting- lord (in the feudal sense, I suppose) or officer in the service of the king of Israel who gets trampled in the gate by the people has been cursed by God (through Elisha) for sneering at something- perhaps the pricing scheme? which is never specified, except by inference- and then sent by the king to die in a food riot. Was the king innocent of murder, though guilty of profiteering and price fixing? I don't know, I wasn't there. Now, unless the cursed man happened to be right that there was something fishy (and not in the good sense) about this deal, why would the people riot? Could it be that the people were a little fed up with starvation and didn't feel like giving up their silver pieces to pay for famine relief the king was getting for nothing from God? Further, though they might not have known it, there was also plenty of gold and silver right there in the abandoned Syrian camp, and therefore little or no need to charge the people for what a king should give to his people freely. Yes, I think this is a story about corruption trickling down from on high, since it is nigh inconceivable that anything could trickle heavenward from Earth.

Thought: Art should hit everyone and hurt no one.

My goals for this week are to eat only vegetables and to move into a roof-garden penthouse. So there- if I seem a little preoccupied, it's because I am. I have a lot to do this week. The veggies I could probably do, the penthouse probably not. Will I do either? Nope, but I think I will give up coffee, and start planning my pirate implementation of this which I found here by way of here. I really like it, and if it saves even one kitty whisker's worth of fuel, great. I think any decent swivel-mounted mirror will do fine- I'll affix it to the windowsill in some appropriate and feasible manner yet to be determined. Why do I like it? It eliminates a significant blind spot on the driver side at eye level in the forward field of view. It bypasses distracting (driver must select left or right mirror via tiny, lurchy slider switch) joystick adjustment. It's easy to do, and it's one less thing they can damage in the parking lot. Darn them anyway. Yesterday they left a 2 inch paper-washered nail (I know, I know- I'm trying to find a picture) on the shoulder of the road. When I pulled to the right for a bunch of wailing fire trucks, I picked up the nail and got a flat tire. They will stop at nothing to wreck my car. If I stopped at nothing, I'd wreck my car, too.

There will come a time when no one living will remember a world in which loud, demanding announcements and propaganda did not issue from:

gas pumps
deli cases
check-out stands
waiting rooms
dining rooms
buses
airplanes
trains
jail cells
automatic banking stations
transit stops
public restrooms

But I remember. In the past ten years this authoritarianist approach to broadcasting has migrated from the inhuman (yes, Asia- I'm talking about you) world to our fair land, and it's getting harder and harder to go anywhere without being subjected to a forceful violation. Have you experienced this? You're minding your own business when an unattended audio-video device self-launches into a repeating barrage of mind-numbing, insulting, privacy-invading crap that makes any sort of thought or (let alone conversation) nearly impossible. What gives anyone the right to program a machine to do this to you? If you laid this kind of a trap with a knife or gun, you'd be a criminal. It's called booby-trapping, and it's illegal. Never mind the legality-most of the miserable shits who are abusing technology this way would probably argue that you are asking for it by patronizing their establishments. Bear this in mind when you shop- these businesses think so little of you as a person that they are perfectly willing to let a machine harangue you, on the off-chance that you might respond positively. Please show them otherwise, by protesting everywhere you encounter these pervasive and 100% unacceptable assaults.

Don't give your business to anyone who treats you this way, and let them know why you are staying away. If they tell you how much other people appreciate being blasted with unsolicited and unstoppable blather, ask them where your feedback fits in. This won't do much to change their minds- after all, a) they have already committed a lot of time and money to crafting their traps and b) they know more consumers will put up with it than won't- but it's the proper response to utterly criminal noise pollution. If you don't fight them now in the supermarket and the library and the fast-food line, you'll just have to fight them next month when they want to install one of these infernal devices on your street corner. If you ignore the one they plant at the corner of Home Street and Neighbor Ave, you'll find them putting one in your kitchen next, and when you order them off your property they'll say you are over-reacting to something that's already well-established and generally accepted everywhere else. What will you be able to say to that? Eh?

Even when I know what's gotten into me lately, I don't always know what to do - or not do- about it. But that's only factual- in my opinion, which is the only authority under your sun I recognize, there's nothing wrong with this world I can't fix by breeding you Earthlings like rats. Ooops, past my bedtime.

I dug a carrot bed 1.5 feet by 2.0 surface area in my little plot today- depth of screened and amended soil is 1.5 feet,very slightly mounded to a 70% plateau perhaps 4 inches high. I didn't border this mound with the screened gravel as I did with my latest potato patch, but I may do that later if the pile begins to unravel, though such a modest mountain will probably sink into the ground before it can get much of a start at falling apart. Because the new carrot bed is not very exciting, I've attached a photo of the walled-in potato mound instead. I like the gravel retainer ring because so far it's been keeping the mound smooth and soft, which will make harvesting much easier, and it should do a pretty good job of holding the dirt in the ground when I yank the spuds.

I have a couple of other potato beds- a tall un-walled mound which I expect will collapse to clods and loose dirt when I start pulling potatoes, and a deep brick-bordered bed (you can see part of one wall in the picture) that will give the same neat harvest and consistent replanting it always does (third year of mostly volunteer crops)- but I think the graveled mound will do almost as well, without the expense, effort and zoning debates of building another brick pit. My beloved brick bed- originally built as a fire pit- is over twenty years old and though still quite serviceable, it is showing its age, mainly in the mortar, which is cracking and letting moist dirt work on its increasingly exposed inner surfaces. The necessary repairs would amount to a rebuild, which would mean cleaning bricks and mixing mortar- probably a couple of days work. I can rebuild a gravel-edged mound, refreshed soil and all, in an hour using only a shovel and a 1/4 inch screen, so if this first try works as well as I expect it to, I will probably install gravel rings around all my mounded beds next time I turn them over.

My yellow-fleshed icebox watermelon and small striped eggplant are not doing as well as the potatoes, since nights are still too cold and days are not hot enough- if I can keep them alive another month, I think they'll wake up and start growing. The soil is good and they're properly watered, so all we need is the weather. I may dig a bean patch this weekend, unless I can forget in time. I'm working on that even now.

I'm not political- not partisan anyway, and not at all activist- and I don't intend to take the pulpit or beat a drum in this space, so join me instead in marveling at the power of formulaic language.
Listening to Terry Gross and Al Gore chat today, I heard the man some describe as our former vice president even as others consider him their president in exile give tongue to something very like the following:

On the eve of the Iraq war Senator Robert Byrd stood on the floor of the Senate and asked .. blah, blah, blah, blah.

Note the senatorial phrase Mr. Gore employs in this anecdote, and appreciate the imagery it evokes- even over the radio, I could see Senator Byrd- or at least someone (someone like Colonel Blimp holding forth in the bath) of senatorial and unmistakably grave posture and countenance, to say nothing of voice. So what, you ask? Well, nothing earthshaking, only that it's good to recognize how easily our imagination can be manipulated.

Patience may be a virtue, but it is also a necessity. I want my potatoes to grow, and perhaps they share that sentiment with me, but there's not much we can do but wait. The ground was prepared, the soil was carefully amended and a safe-and-sane plan for water delivery was implemented- I even planted the potatoes. Apparently the missing ingredient is time.

If I can't be patient, I may suffer for my impatience; I may worry and make futile efforts to hasten the growth; perhaps in my eagerness to see little green sprouts coming out of the ground I will harm or kill my crop. Certainly I will annoy myself and others on this subject. I'm doing that right now, and you're just sitting there taking it. Thank you.

and now... a rip-off of an old song (movies here and here) I can't get out of my head-

In mia testa, questa canzone caratterizza il minore ma in pieno bodied gli accenti orchestral del barbershop che circondano e che aumentano le frasi e le girate selezionate dell'aria ma affiderò quello alla vostra immaginazione . Se desiderate quella ultima frase in inglese, veda sidebar superiore di questa pagina e scatti sopra il collegamento metta la vostra linguetta nella bocca del Drifty o vada diritto a questo Web site libero stimabile ed attendibilmente inesatto di traduzione.

or, read it like this: In my head, this song characterizes the minor but in full load bodied the accents orchestral of the barbershop that they encircle and that they increase to the phrases and the turns selected of the air but I will entrust that one to your imagination. If wished that last phrase in English, sees sidebar advanced of this page and releases over the connection put yours linguetta in the mouth of the Drifty or go straight to this stimabile and reliable inexact free Web site of translation.

Intro:


Go on gal, don’t take me for no fool

I ain’t gonna quit you, pretty mama, while the weather’s
cool

Around your back door, honey, I’m gonna creep

Just as long as you bring me two-and-a-half a week



I’ve got a girl, she works in the white folks yard

She bring me meal, I swear she brings me lard

She brings me meal, honey she brings me lard

She bring me everything honey that a girl can steal



Lord a vaudeville circus rider came to town

They got a dancer lookin’ nice and brown

They didn’t know it was against the law

For the monkey’s to stop at a five cent store

Well, just around the corner, just a minute too late

Another one standin’ at the big back gate

I’m simply wild about my good cocaine



I stood my corner, hey hey!

Here come Sal with a nose all so’

Doctors said she couldn’t smell no mo’

Lord run doctor, ring the bell

The women in the alley…

I’m simply wild about my good cocaine



Furniture man came to my house, was last Sunday morn

Asked me was my wife at home

Said she’d long been gone

Backed his wagon up to my door

Took everything I had

He carried it back to the furniture store

Honey, I did feel sad



What in the world has any man got, now

Messin’ with the furniture man?

Got no dough, stand for sho’

Certainly will back you back

Take everything from an earthly plant

From a skillet to a frying pan

If there ever was a devil born without any horns

Musta been the furniture man



I hear you mama, hey hey!

Here come Sal with a nose all so’

Doctors said she couldn’t smell no mo’

Lord go doctor, ring the bell

Women in the alley…

I’m simply wild about my good cocaine



Lord the babies in the cradle in New Orleans

The doctors kept a-whiffin’ til the baby got mean

Doctor whiffed until the baby got so’

Mama said she couldn’t smell no mo’



Lord go, Doctor, ring the bell,

The women in the alley…

I simply wild about my good cocaine

I’m simply wild about my good cocaine



I’m simply wild about my good cocaine


If you're interested, the performer (song) is Dick Justice.
I don't know who made the movie. You can find an mp3 of the song here.