on seeing things with fresh eyes.

Hello, all of you apparitions living in my mind, products of my brain and the world without. I've missed you. It seems there is so little time to discuss things with you these days. Busy as bees are we down here. This week of work has come to an end and rewarded me with two days of relative freedom. The progeny is watching Christmas specials with mother. The sun is shining. There is tea steeped; would you like some?

Fresh eyes: euphemistic, sure. One's eyes being well rested does not necessarily grant better vision or understanding. It's the quality of the rest that's most important for me. Ten hours of sleep is sometimes much worse for productivity, thoughtfulness, happiness than five peaceful, relaxed and dream-filled hours.

All this musing was prompted this morning by a simple discovery. It has always been that toilet paper must sit on the hook, dispenser (or what-have-you) with the loose end dangling over the facing side of the roll. Why would anyone's traditions run contrary to this? Well, the progeny has solved the riddle: toddling people (of, say, two solar years' age) like to unravel things, create chaos, act as "agents of change". It allows them to learn. If the loose end of the roll is at the back, then the toddler's natural inclination to spin the roll by pulling down on the facing side will not yield a ream of paper all over the floor.

This is, like everything I suppose, not fool-proof. But it is a good reason to consider the rear-facing-toilet-paper-roll-end. There you are, pass it on. Wars have been caused by less. Let's try to understand one another, even if others are only neurons firing in our brains. Communications.

click click.

http://www.google.com/mars/

The above link is actually self-explanatory, which is not always the case with our virtual addresses. The exception may be the spelling of the word "googol", but most people have stopped picking at that nit by now and have instead embraced lousiness.

Google has taken pictures of everything. Knowledge is power, and we the people seem to deserve, as a democratic right, to be able to know everything. Well, our robot-memories deserve to "know" and we deserve to horde, sit about, and get lazy.

Cinnamon bun for the breakfast? Sorry to change the subject, but I'm outta here! Maybe we'll talk about googols later!

farts.

Even as the current mission to the Red Planet is indebted to the appearance of bacteria, so too are we, down here on the Earthly outpost. Whether some of that living stuff came to the third rock from the fourth in some vaguely-explicable cosmic action is a really fun thought to turn round and round. "I turned into a Martian. Woah-oh-OH! I can't even recall my name...".

I was about to say that thoughts like this have already found their way into our zeitgeist, the comfort of the would-be lone-goer, the alienated, the freak. But using the Misfits as evidence is a dangerous game. Brain-trains get derailed.  Mr. Topham Hatt must warn Thomas the Tank Engine sternly against causing more "confusion and delay". Suddenly the compulsion to write about what Mythic Mrs. Zeitgeist teaches us about the God of War becomes impossible.

A few days ago, in the lunch-room, we opened a newspaper and were met with the leering centre-fold gaze of the new Mars rover, Curiosity. From what I saw spread before us in an attempt to cause awe-inspired swoons at the ingenuity of humans, I can safely say that felines need not forsake their lives just yet. They may go on terrorizing creatures capable of gravity-defying flight, keeping neighbourhoods awake in the wee hours, and relieving themselves in our flower-boxes. Do you remember, lovely reader, the lunar rover of decades past? Yes? Well grant it some modern computers and you have Curiosity. Huperdaughterkind (that's the feminist-sensitive way of putting it, though this project is likely starved of the female touch) is STILL stuck on the six-wheeled dune-buggy. REALLY. Grow up, boys.

Lunches went cold, became inedible, were thrown out. Jaws were too much engaged in the act of dropping to bring themselves to chew. Perhaps I hyperbolize, I don't even know anymore. What about a small android boy that can walk upright, uses laser-guided trowels (dare I say "in real time"?), has thousand-mile long harpoon-drills for fingers and operates an impervious suction-cup bubble vehicle that can roll up cliffs as he crawls within? No, N.A.S.A. is going with the dune buggy again. Dune buggies are the best thing for uncovering methane. And where there are farts, there is life.

So, let us go around the corner to see what the artists are coming up with when it comes to Space Exploration:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUr1zGq5OMM

Ah! Eh? Yes.

curiosity

As some of you must have heard or read by now, the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (N.A.S.A.) has launched its most recent exploratory mission to Mars. This happened today, the 26th of November 2011. The spacecraft is due to reach the Red Planet in August 2012, after having traversed more than 300 million miles. I would like to go on record as being the first to say "Are we there yet?".

weak

It's a terrible waste of virtual space, this sharing of links. But we feel compelled. Not since Walter White discussed the discovery of water on Mars with the father of the junkie girl-friend he had allowed to die that same night, choking on her vomit, have we felt so compelled. Thank you "Breaking Bad" and Toronto Sun.

http://www.torontosun.com/2011/11/20/delaware-names-ambassador-to-mars

Space travellers! Time travellers! It all sounds very grand, and yet we all do it every day. That's what is so lovely about the ho-hum. It's really hocus-pokus. Just look a little bit more closely. Boredom is the first resort of the small-minded. Or would that be sarcasm? Sarcasm is pretty boring once you've practiced it for a while. Movin' on up!

It was our intent here at the hop to provide you with some entertaining reading of a decent length this morning. Unfortunately, a clean sweep of personal "E" accounts, a review of how they are connected to one another, and a massive clean-up of spam-spam-spam-spam-wonderful-spam-glorious-spam and old messages (hereafter and forevermore referred to as "E"s, new and old) needed to be undertaken. I dived in (not dove; a dove is a bird, not a verb) and wrestled the kraken. It pulled me down, down, down, to its dark abysmal home. Fortunately, I can hold my breath for a very long time as I am used to travel in places lacking any oxygen at all. (Most of you dear readers can relate, yes? Holding your breath for the next instalment, here?) I cut through the electric webbings of the monster's prison and swam to freedom. It is nice to breath again. Put Radiohead's "The Bends" on. It is the day's prescribed listening. Go back in time! To the nineties! Why would anyone want to?!
Love,
zpzmn!

more hallucinations.

Sometimes people just have too many ideas spinning to know what to do. Maybe it's an over-active imagination, or severe paranoia, or a lack of intellectual diligence or over-stimulation or under-stimulation. Maybe all of these, or some of these, or something else? Do people commune with the dead? There are thoughts coming from somewhere. Some are disturbing. Some are distracting but otherwise benign. Where are they coming from? Thoughts are products of our environment much more than a commodity that we "create". Our environment is bigger and more complex than is imaginable. I'm not becoming all gawd-smacked here, I'm just rambling in an attempt to open my mind up to the wonder, danger, and timelessness of this moment right now. I want them to speak to me. The winged-saucer folk. The space goats. The ghosts. I need to know how to proceed, because the way I'm going now is not cutting the proverbial mustard seed.

ramblings

No amount of pleading that the web we have spun and then promptly stuck ourselves in is not "real-life" can save us. The nerds and geeks and scientists are having their revenge on the jocular, and taking as much of the rest of the population as they can with them. Anything you type is neither your property nor secure from the eyes of the diabolical who choose to view it and perhaps use it to plot your disgrace and downfall. I believe a certain junkie by the name of K.D. Cobain once said it best: "Just because you're paranoid/ Don't mean they're not after you". The double negative can still be put to use heightening pessimism in this language, so quit your grammatical goose-stepping. I am a fly in a web. Or maybe a wasp? Where is my sting? That hyper-active, self-important four-eyed (thus bespectacled?) robot arachnid is closing in and I am in dire need of repellent.

XXX

Heavenly bodies! Erect your rocket and blast off.

http://www.tecca.com/news/2011/03/15/saturn-fly-by-video/

return of the MacIntosh.

-"Welcome back, me!"

~"Welcome back, you!"

Tilde.

It has been the most lovely summer. There has been little rain, but we are not farmers, so that has little affected us. Consider it a break from the floods of the spring-time. 

Do you remember the game "M.U.L.E."? Is there a board-game version? It was a video game from the Commodore 64 era. It was about colonizing a small patch of an alien planet. This was done with the aid of a Multi-Utility-Land-Exfoliator, or something. The acronym escapes me at the moment. A robot ass, yes. You could play the role of various alien people, or an Earthling. You bid upon land, then developed it with help from your M.U.L.E.. Your plots could then produce grain, minerals, what-nots and a large portion of the game was devoted to selling the resources you produced on the market with the other players. Economics made fun! "Edutainment" in its infancy.

We have an infant. He is a curly-haired ginger-boy. You can't catch him; run, run, fast as you can. 

One last note: I am searching for a few good people to be in a band: the Houyhnhnms. Punkolka. Space-pop. A surfacing flounder or a floundering surfacer and a pentagram (the five-faced fox from outer-space). Does any of this make any sense? Tell me what you think it means! Send me a message, at your leisure. We are off for now to the park with the wee one and breakfast biscuits. Sigh-ho! Sky-high!

cosmic rays

Hello Spacelings and Earth-monsters.
Have a look at this article. There is no time like the present, so I'm off to enjoy it. See you in the future!

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/did-amateur-astronomer-spot-secret-mars-190004323.html

(That blue text up there is the link, just so you know, those of you who aren't familiar with such technologies.)

letter to Earth

Dear planet Earth,
Your inhabitants are ferocious, especially the civilized ones who should know better than to do some of the bad things they do. Why are you like this? Do you have some undiscovered race living in the deepest darkest parts of the oceans who have need only of the heat of your mantle for survival and who abide there until things on the surface become a bit more hospitable? Are you training them down there in your womb, a secret sect, to cleanse us sun-worshippers of our disrespectful ways? Sometimes I hope so. But we're not all bad out here on the periphery. One of the civilized recently figured out where some of the missing matter of the universe can be found. She didn't even leave your surface to do it, either. We make up some wild stories. What are the stories like of the mantle-people? Do they have ex-ray vision? The reindeer people on the North Crust are able to see in U.V.. Your wonders are many Earth. Long may you spin.
5m5 (a fan)

hair-bird pigeon-camera

Some time has passed since the last posting but you probably wouldn't know it. The amount of time between inspirational flashes or even doggedly determined forays into the realm of creative writing has been reduced to a slight downward twitching of your finger. A funny quote made its way into the old factory recently, but I can't remember the quoted person. Here it is anyway, non verbatim -which is to say, in paraphrase.
The art of writing is like the ability to wear a toupee: some people can make it work, some cannot. Writing poetry is like wearing a toupee in a hurricane.
It may be time to revel in having a full head of hair. I believe it is time to grow it out a bit, before it starts to thin and fall out. The wee boy has such a tuft of curls, it is inspiring. And I have a strange urge to make members of the family (or fim-fam, if you like) into a team with certain shared, matching visual elements.
There you have it. News from space!

thinking

You can't take it back, and you can't take it with you. All things become incorporeal in the eyes of death. But the value of each living moment also reveals itself, and gives you what you need to continue on.

n.a.s.a. an unfit earth ambassador

Have a look at how the North American Space Agency deals with cultural diversity.


http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/49124/gaelic_banned_by_nasa__space_pupils_censored/

it's an anniversary

Oh, hello there! What's that? It's only been fifty years? Well, think about it: it's only half a century and.... No, I agree, it's no less amazing a feat of human ingenuity. Completely. Great, yes, I'll post it on the log. Okay. YOU TOO! Bye.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Technology/Space-50-Years-On-From-Gagarins-First-Space-Flight-Space-Exploration-Is-Far-From-Over/Article/201104215970851?lpos=Technology_First_Home_Page_Feature_Teaser_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15970851_Space%3A_50_Years_On_From_Gagarins_First_Space_Flight%2C_Space_Exploration_Is_Far_From_Over

David Bowie part two

Recently, a few of my hard-earned dollars went toward the purchase of some musical recordings. Among these is a David Bowie album. No, no old Major Tom; alas, no Spiders from Mars. I found something of his from the  Nineteen-Nineties, that decade of filth and identity crisis. "Earthling" is the title. It made its appearance when the underground rave scene was taking off, I think (a confused time in my life as well). A strange combination, Bowie and drum samples. It's bizarre. Over-produced, with that big-stadium-rock-sound featured on most over-hyped nineties commercial junk. The album even includes a "duet" remix version of one of the songs with Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails. Just plain weird and gimmicky. I like how the whole concept remains tied to "The Man Who Fell to Earth", and though it's entitled "Earthling" it sounds like the same alien from the aforementioned Bowie-movie stuck around our planet another two or three decades to have a half-life crisis and act upon the desire to stay "hip" and "with it". Ironic, really: Bowie playing around, trying to push boundaries while relying on his usual "oddity"- and by this I suppose I mean his larger persona through the decades- to sell the whole thing. But then, it's all somehow artistically truthful in a way as well, in spite of how contrived. Now I'm looking forward to finding a copy of "Heathen" and having a listen. I remember when these albums came out and thinking "hey, I'd like to listen to that, it's odd enough for me". Perhaps Bowie's strength has been his appeal to the outsider at large, and within. But I'm glad I didn't give into the commercial pull back then. I think I would have regretted it and felt ripped-off. Now I can consume the stuff second-hand, retrospectively, and there's that much more to enjoy.

david bowie

Today I had a chat in real life with one of the people who reads the postings in this log. Let's call her "Edna" to preserve her anonymity.  We usually use "Shane" for such purposes, but what would a world filled with inhabitants named only Shane be like? I don't think I'm ready to visit that planet yet. So let us allow the solar-winds of change to blow our mentally navigated (and completely fabricated) space-vessel to new places. Edna mentioned that there have been few new "the martian hop" postings as of late. She also sent me something that I will share with you now, because it is not only relevant, but it also made me chuckle aloud:

Jupe

Usually it was easier just to throw on the guise of an insect for a reconnaissance, but that made seeing more difficult. With so much of such a small brain devoted to collecting and sorting through visual stimuli, she would have a difficult time making sense of anything else while dressed in June bug drag. She needed to be more than mere paparazza on this outing. Besides, it was mid-winter where she was going, and inconspicuousness was always required wherever the vagabonds were concerned.

for Mike

"So long as I don't have to shovel it..." the old Caper used to say, since he favoured rain over snow any day. There are few who had a sweeter disposition than he. He also had a toe where his thumb used to be. One of his hands one day at the mill got trapped underneath a large pile of hot steel. The pain that he must have endured! His left hand was crushed, mangled and melted; tangled and tattered. By a terrible chance, he'd gotten it smelted. In time, and to some degree, it was cured by a specialist physician for a nominal fee. The procedures were new and untested as yet, but the toe-graft was the one good chance that he'd get to have use of the arm in some capacity. All this he later related to me.

"Age before beauty" I'd sometimes joke as I let him enter a doorway before me at work. "Shit before the shovel" was his stock reply. He'd say it without ever missing a beat. He'd not bat an eyelid. That's how we'd kid. But now he's long gone and dead, six feet below any snow he won't shovel. He's fled, but I doubt if he's burning, the devil. No, he's high up and far off and quite out of sight. His body was broken but now he's made of light.

the N.A.S.A. scrap-book, part one

Here is a picture of another world, a different sphere entirely, that exists independent of the human race. So far, human hands have not been able to touch her virgin soil. 

P.S. click the image to make it enormous!

wanderings

As it turns out, my wife never did write about our family's walk in the Assiniboine forest, so it is left to me. We all went: mother, father, baby, even canine. We drove to the head of a trail in the little blue car, then set out on foot. The weather was agreeable for an afternoon in March, but the light was diffuse. The sky was not overcast, it was featureless white cloud, and the pale evidence of a sun somewhere above met our eyes only after infinite reflections between white snow below and white cloud above. We were in-between, squinting into a void broken only by ourselves and the countless thin, black lines of birch on either side of our blank path.


There is very little to observe in the Assiniboine forest in March. During a momentary rest that also served as a chance to put the mittens back onto a child who continually managed to get them off, our faithful hound relieved her bowels of their burden. Only then did I realize how wonderful the wood, the day, the whiteness had smelled. We held our breath, then our noses. I had a camera with me, so I captured a few images of us on the trail. I took a picture of the dog's business in the snow; a more vibrant brown I doubt I have ever seen.


Some short time later, as we were passing some cattails, I think made our first remark about the monster who inhabits that forest. "Very elusive" he or she is. Then I believe we headed back toward the blue automobile awaiting us in the parking lot. The path on the journey back twisted and turned. We had not  turned around and gone back the way we had come. We took the first intersecting path in the general direction we needed to go. Intersecting paths then somehow seemed to abound. We zigged, we zagged. We were lost.


Eventually, we saw some signs of movement through the trees.... We headed toward the moving things, and found that we were very close to the road we had traveled to get to the forest. The car-park must be near! But the path looked nothing like the return-path we had seen when we had first set out. On the sidewalk we realized that, though it felt as if we walked more than the return distance, we were actually a kilometer short of our destination. Had we fallen prey to a monstrous spell?

moonspeak

A co-worker of mine, who shall remain nameless; no, perhaps we'll call her "Shane" to ensure her anonymity, though calling her "Anonymous" would be more apt. Anyhow, Shane is an expert at Moon-speak. Have you not heard of this dialect? It smacks ever so slightly of racism (against the human race, what other?). Moon-speak is the term used to refer to the very broken English sometimes spoken by people from the Earth continent of Asia. People from the countries Japan and Korea are noted for their Moon-speak.

English is a much younger language than most on Asia, and it sounds and functions much differently, having been at such a remove in time and space for much of its existence. So, when someone  from an Asian country is learning English, the sound and meaning of what they are saying often remains foreign to an English speaker, and gets labeled as Moon-speak. I mention all of this by means of introduction. Shane and I refer to my wife as "mai waifu". 

Today, mai waifu, and mai famara-ee went for a walk in the very spooky Assiniboine forest. I cannot tell much more about this though, because mai waifu now has her own web-log, and she wants to write about the adventure. You can find it here:

http://thelittlereadengine.blogspot.com

NO!

The Mars Volta are a terrible, terrible band, and I don't like them. It is necessary to leave some evidence of this here because a friend of mine, let's call him "Shane" to protect his identity, introduced me to the band and decided they were my favourite because I have a Martian-themed webbed log. They are well and truly cringe worthy. I will leave it up to your selves to search out video footage of the Mars Volta "performing" on David Letterman's late night television program.

sheesh

...and then there's these guys:

don't sweat it

All this talk of space and other planets has really helped to bring me back down to Earth. We already have an atmosphere here: how great is that? If you want to see other life-forms, all you have to do is walk out your door and scatter a few crumbs. Until humans figure out how to build a proper flying saucer, the cost of getting off this teeming planet is, well, astronomical. But we don't have to leave. We can continue sending messages out there and wait for a reply. In the meantime we can put a little more effort into keeping what we have in better condition, right? I'm going to let outer space be more about inspiration, not perspiration.

tick tock on the clock

The Martians of the past could have been so war-like that they wiped themselves off the face of the Red Planet. No reports have yet been revealed on Earth concerning microbial or bacterial life on the planet, but we like to believe that there could be. After a million years have passed, noticeable changes will have occurred everywhere. Humanity may have become Martian, who's to say? We may need to find a way to combat the pugilistic tendencies of our species in order to find out.

Is there no utopia, no 'not place'? Time is 'not place', though it makes for the possibility of places. The electronic network humanity now uses to communicate is 'not place' and far from anything near human societal perfection. That there is no perfect place is the didactic thrust of the concept of utopia. Yet even with shattered ideals, there is still a means to go on. Time. The sun. Life. This might be all there is. People can help sustain their little part in it. Desire still spurs us on, and hope.

no time for idle chit-chat

Oh, hi!
Sorry, I have to go!
Here, enjoy this little ditty:

an old poem

An old poem that I wrote came up on the screen in front of my eyes just a few minutes ago. It is about drinking and regicide, as far as I can gather, and perhaps also the sacrifice of the fool-king in certain Northwestern European societies (Celtic, Gàidhealtachd?).

Anyhow, I made a number of key strokes, fiddled with the mouse a bit, and there it was. Now, here it is. Some editing was required. Perhaps I'll expand upon it sooner or later.

the king's head

thirsting for the sacred
streams of forgetfulness
where the mind and body
usurp the ego-king
and float on, free,
in the tannic waters,
from his bloody efforts
to conquer and to kill

It captured a moment of drunken contemplation pretty well: the self-destructive aspects of such a pastime and the happy hopefulness too. I feel inclined to have a nice cold pint right about now.

malfunction

You know Jack, it's easy to dismiss these posts without reading them but they are here to stay. Well, they are here at the moment. Okay, they appear on this back-lit screen and are stored as a mathematical equation in a machine somewhere. Heck, that makes it even easier for the purpose of these postings to be lost.

There's always an artist who claims that his or her work is driven by a desire to examine "practice". That's what these postings are, practice. It's as if I'm writing musical scales every day. Sometimes a word orphrase willput me in mind ofsomething, and a tangent carries usaway...

Alright, canijustsaythatmyspacebarisnotworkingverywellontheleftsideandi'mnotusedto
hittingitwithmyrightthumbandit'sveryannoying?!!

It's hard to make strange space-sounds with a vacuum-cleaner-trumpet suffering a broken chord!

nothing to see here, move along please

It's time to re-familiarize myself with graphic design concepts and cant. The more I put into my job, the easier it will be to make graphic design my profession. My mother would be so proud. She always said I should do graphic design. I always scoffed. Now I think she was onto something. Today I'm reading about bitmap and vector images. At work, one of our programs uses vector imaging. The Cartesian plane is a very flat place; at least, until actual real physical phenomena interfere. Infinity is a long way to stretch an object.

Not a very interesting posting today. But perhaps more interesting than nothing at all.

pure fantasy

If we were to compare our earthly location to some place close to its like on the Red planet of this solar system, we could say we are living on one of that planet's poles. I'm not entirely clear as to whether human exploration has revealed water (ice) on Mars, but either pole would be the place to look. Whatever the case, the weather of our outpost is once again like that of an arctic desert. All water is frozen! The air is dry and cold. The wind is out of the north and pierces clothing like thousands of icy needles.

Well, it has been a while since our last communication. The alien boy has been difficult to rear of late; however, he's gained even more power of persuasion through pure, innocent cuteness. This makes up for the whining, the tantrums and the tears. If I were whisked off from one part of the galaxy, had my mind reset, removed from whatever body it once had inhabited, if necessary, and placed in a new, weak, defenseless human body to start life afresh on a bizarre world, I'd be upset too.

Mormons have curious beliefs about the after-life. I recall someone telling me once that they believe we become gods over our own individual planets when we die from this world. Recently I started re-reading a collection of stories about dragons and, er, dungeons that I'd quite enjoyed in my teens. A little digging into the background of the authors revealed the Mormonic connection. Having read a certain series of books about vampires by a Mormon author it occurred to me that these people are really, truly devoted to fantasy. Escapism must be necessary within a religion that places so much emphasis on denial: both self-denial and the denial of "reality".

not enough writing time

Today won't be the day that I finish my article on the Disney film adaptation of Burroughs' Mars stories, but I will soon.

Here, have a picture. Someone else's visual interpretation of John Carter and Dejah Thoris:


 
Now it's off to draw a picture myself.

incomplete article

 http://www.johncartermovie.com/

As further proof that there is nothing new under the sun, Disney Corp. is making a movie based upon Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars series. Since finding out about this a few minutes ago, I have decided that this movie is going to be my guilty pleasure. I may even go to see it on opening night. It will be filmed in three dimensions, and knowing Disney, there are sure to be lots of collectible inaction figures around once the film hits the cinema. Also, it will be Pixar studio's first "live-action" project.

As a rule I support the notion that the book is always better than any movie adaptation, but this one may be "the exception that proves the rule" (I've never understood that saying, so bear with me as I try). Film-making has advanced over the past couple of decades to the point where visual wizardry now allows the viewer's imagination to take a back seat to the vision of the film-maker. Undoubtedly, this can be a problem in adaptations of written works to the big screen if the author's intent is not easily translated. For me, The Lord of the Rings movies are a great example of this.

I really love the dusty old tomes of Tolkien, and have read the Silmarillion, and even some of Christopher Tolkien's reconstruction of his father's world and the process that went into its development. I also really love what Peter Jackson did with the story. Both movie and book were labours of love that required real mastery to complete successfully. Given that, the written work is still the higher form of art-work.

Yadda-yadda, more on this next time. This may have to be an un-premeditated posting! But I like where this is going. Also, a link!

saturday morning cartoons

Another posting since I've been falling behind this month, even if I'm the only one who cares.

for your viewing pleasure

Clippity-clop.

balderdash

The body is amazing. It is a spacecraft. It is a time craft. It has a brain, a physical thing, and houses a mind, a non-corporeal being. Yet, my body carries me to certain doom. Can I fault my body for this? The set of circumstances for mortality go beyond just one body. There seems to be a school of thought these days that is focused on curing the individual body of the "disease" of mortality. Some scientists think they are coming closer to a solution. How can this be? Why should this be? Where the heck is the ethics committee?

In bygone days kings, queens, emperors, rulers attempted to immortalize themselves. Stories have come down to us, but the bodies of the people themselves are now dust. They became food for the worms and maggots and where their minds are, who can guess? Maybe some race of alien being has bottled their energy and now hawks it on the side of a celestial turnpike to passing saucers. If the source of these alien creature's livelihood dries up because a few human scientists decide to play god, humanity may be in a whole heap of trouble. These aliens are imbibing Tiberius, for heaven's sake! Do we really want to take such rapid leaps backwards in the name of progress? Why give Hitler a second chance?

Let's be content with what we have and not risk the U.F.O.s descending upon us!

Barsoom

Today I rode the transport service to the hospital district where I made a donation of my precious bodily fluids. It has been some time since I've done this, but the procedure hasn't changed all that much. The facilities are very nice: open-concept with mezzanine, glass and girders, windows and skylights all over. The space station life-saver.

The nurse asking the embarrassing screening questions noticed I had a book with me and asked what it was. I chuckled self-deprecatingly, "The God's of Mars by Ed Rice Burroughs". She recognized the name but couldn't place it. "He invented Tarzan" I said. So we got to talking a little about books. Her dark little secret? The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. Mine? Not wishing to be out-done, "The Twilight series".

Burroughs is a guilty pleasure too. But relevant to my present studies.

times 2

It looks as though our power shortage of last night has been handled. We have connected the machine to the outpost's external power supply via electron hose. In lay-people's terms, we plugged it in.

Now the only problem is time travel. I appear to be moving much too rapidly through time this morning. It is already nine minutes to nine! I have to hop aboard my two wheels in ten minutes and visit my employer for six hours. Oddly enough, once I arrive at my destination the speed of time will slow down to half its normal rate.

There may be a solution to my time traveling conundrum, however. Relativity! How I perceive time is the key. Have you ever noticed how quickly time seems to move when you aren't doing anything in particular, have no deadlines, are on holiday? As soon as it is necessary to view measurement of time, you see how much has gone by without your notice. Likewise, if you have a deadline, you tend to keep track of all you need to do to complete a task on time, and there often doesn't seem enough time. The strain of constant reference to what time it is relative to the deadline appears to speed up time.

Is time really speeding up though? Do we travel through time or in time? The key must be that time "appears" to be increasing or decreasing speed, relative to our thoughts! So, time travel is possible how? With mind-control!

times

Time travel is possible. More than possible, time travel is necessary and we do it every day. Where it gets difficult is traveling in any direction other than forward through time. It occurs to me just now that time travel to either side is either teleporting (i.e. instantaneous travel through space) or, in the case of multi-verses (as opposed to the concept of the universe), instantaneous travel to a different plane of physical existence.

I have tried backwards travel through time, but it mostly hasn't worked. I say mostly because human memory can be a powerful means of approximating backward time travel, but we remain physically locked in the present, so it doesn't quite work out.

More on this next time. I am now running on reserve battery power.

slowly growing old

Every day brings something new. Discovery! Why is this so easy to forget? Am I programmed to forget? Do we program ourselves, or are the Martians secretly in control? Does it matter? What you think matters! That you think matters! What you believe can change.

There is no such thing as boredom if you convince yourself there is no such thing as boredom. But this quickly becomes problematic: you must first have some conception of boredom in mind in order to say that it is false, untrue, not of this world. This is a black hole. The really vastly large phenomena we inhabit, life, time, the whateververse, are riddled with these. But the void, intellectual or inside-out star, can't be without the something, the everything, that is evident all around. Smell a flower, draw a picture, take some of that anti-matter within your mind's grasp and put it to use. There is so little time. So please, live like there is nothing tomorrow, and something right now.

teeth

Between the months of August and May, the School of Dentistry screens potential patients for training purposes. There is a 50% reduction in fees, but the dental work is very, very slow. We may be signing me up for the longest cleaning and cavity filling in the history of forever.

Immortality through dental check-ups. Research in this field could yield amazing discoveries pertinent to long-distance space travel. Put on the mask or take the needle and when you awaken, you're in the Gasdaaaagagu Galaxy light-years away from planet Earth, your breath is minty-fresh and your smile shines like the porcelain goddess.

I should probably take advantage of the reduced fees now. Once cryogenic freezing/thawing is common practice, the students are going to be in high demand. Painless dentistry while exploring the whateververse. I can hardly wait for the future.

L.R.O.C.

http://wms.lroc.asu.edu/lroc_browse/view/M109134835LE

L.R.O.C. stands for "Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera". This is the camera that allows Earthlings to take close-up pictures of their moon. The Hubble Space Telescope is incapable of such detailed, zoomed images. The link above will lead you to a picture on the interweb taken by L.R.O.C. of the Apollo 16 landing site. It looks like they left a large quantity of garbage behind. Typical human behaviour. Oh well, you can't take it with you, and at least it's not in Earth's orbit, causing damage to spacecraft.

twocycles

We've had a few busy days recently, so it's been harder than usual to keep you all furnished with new reading material.

This evening, as the Earth horizon slips over the sun and darkness and cold descend, I am a bit more tired than usual. Today was the first day back on the bicycle, winter cycling to and from my workplace. In only a few weeks, my endurance levels have fallen considerably. Despite the soreness, it feels good to be back. Even the human astronauts use cycling to stay fit (albeit stationary). Have a look at this interweb strand:

http://www.space.com/6464-astronauts-patch-space-bicycle.html

Here is a little old-time tune. Maybe Martian music did or would sound something like this?

death

Disaster has struck our little bio-sphere! Mr. Collins and Watson are dead. We discovered their bodies this morning. And was in the throws of death, but he held on for a few hours more. The poor things were belly-up, but at the bottom of the tank rather than at the water's surface. Hale-Bopp and Crick seem alright. The temperature in the tank has been adjusted, and "good" bacteria added. I will have to be more careful with Bopp and Crick from now on. A consultation with the pet store is in order.

Still no word on the dental work. I think there are a few days left before the next moon....

So, not the happiest of days.

outposts and supplies

Wow. When it gets this cold, one really has to bundle up just to go outside for a few minutes. A climate this inhospitable allows me to day-dream that I am on a distant planet during the winter months, trapped, awaiting the saucer that brings the tea and other little luxuries. There are indigenous populations farther north that rely on supplies flown in to their communities, though during the winter there are "ice-roads" that allow transport over land, lake and river. Their ancestors lived on a "different" planet, so to speak. And they looked up into space at a different angle from other peoples, and they saw the movement of the northern lights in the sky. What did think, and what stories did they tell?

Is it easier, I wonder, for a spacecraft to enter a planet's orbit at the poles? I remember reading about Asimov's gravitational-powered vessels and thoughts of the Inuit living so high up North on our planet lead to the question. Things are different up there, and not just because of the ice and snow. Earthmen are frequently pulling meteorites out of the polar ice-caps and studying them. But maybe gravitational pull is greater at the equator. It certainly rhymes. Pull at the pole suggests something entirely different.

not much talk of little green men

Today there was lots of shoveling. Lots and lots of shoveling. Tomorrow, the shoveling of the roofs. There is far too much snow on top of our out-post and the garage. I started clearing some of the snow off the garage this evening and it looked like it was actually three feet deep up there. Quite a large drift had formed. I don't want us to be crushed under a falling ceiling, or hit by an avalanche in our own back yard. That would be most embarrassing.

I had to look up "roofs". At first I was confident I had read that was the correct plural. I did an interweb search and found "rooves". Even as I finish typing it now the computer decorates it with the dotted red underlining, just as it has done with "interweb". Thinking about it a bit I decided the notion I'd had in favour of the unvoiced "f" had come from Tolkien and his thoughts on "dwarfs". A better dictionary gave me some background: late Old English and Middle English use hrof (line above the "o", whichever accent that is) as does Old Norse. Dutch also uses "roef" (the modern language using the same as English, "roof" and the reconstructed Pre-Germanic source (assumed through linguists' study of morphology) is listed as *khrofaz.

Every word has a like history. It's true. I  back-traced it. Language remains one of the most incredible technologies conceived  by the human mind, and one of the most over-looked.

impactful is still a lowsy word

Whenever I try to stretch my mind to contemplate the vastness of space and the strangeness of its other inhabitants, the exercise causes my appreciation for every-day existence on Earth to swell. Even if I do occasionally forget that Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov were two different people, their work impresses itself upon my mind in a likewise impactful fashion. That's correct. Impactful. Like a giant meteorite. Per ardua, ad astra, ad terra firma? Hooray!

books

Two books by Edgar Rice Burroughs arrived for us at the library this past week and today presented an opportunity to pick them up. Both are stories about Mars. I took the time to look around the stacks (which only really qualify as shelves, to be honest with you) and found a Reginald Hill mystery I haven't yet read, and a big book of U.F.O.s by a man who lives in or near Winnipeg. I am trying to "follow" his on-line internet web log (blog for short) but the "blogging" program does not make this easy. It is also difficult to search for blogs. I'll have to do a search for searchers for blogs, but right now that seems tedious.

Still have not officially communicated my desire to leave my mouth to science. Will call the school for dentists before the year, nay, week is out. 

Another discovery: "Marvin" the Martian, of Looney Toons fame, was only given his name quite some time after the original episodes in which he appeared were broadcast. He was only named to improve merchandising profits. In the episodes he is actually only referred to as "Commander of Flying Saucer  X-2".

oral hygiene

I must go to the dentist sometime in the coming few weeks. At least, I must make an appointment with a dentist in the next fortnight, whether that appointment is one, two, or even three months from now is another thing. The plan at the moment is to "leave my mouth to science" and allow dentists-in-training a chance to learn from my gob.

There are ample learning opportunities for a young aspiring dentist in this pie-hole. It's been quite a long time since my last visit to such a professional: a decade at least. Plenty of cavities to fill, possibly some wisdom teeth to pull. Perhaps I'll even wind up with adult braces and a couple of root canals! It's hard to guess in advance what they might say, especially since they are new to the job. I'm sure they will thank me for the wealth of experience I'm giving them.

It appears this communication must be cut a bit short. The others need to do some scans. Off to read Neuromancer. Wild story.

under the freshwater sea

We wanted to let you know the three Puntia anchispora (or tiger barb fish) have been given names. Mr. Collins and Hale-Bopp share their little biosphere with Watson, And, and Crick. Since it is very difficult to tell them apart one from the next, and since they are always swimming around causing a mild but pleasing hypnosis in the mind of their minders, the near pointlessness of their having names has become a running joke here at the outpost. The dynamic duo for whom the fish are named come, appropriately, from the world of human scientific research. James D. Watson and Francis Crick were the first to suggest the double-helix model of deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA. If you watch these fish swim for a little too long, you start to wonder if their constant voyages around the tank might be conjuring life into being on some plane of existence parallel to our own. Srsly.

disjointed thoughts

It would be nice to know what percentage of inter-web ramblings in a forum such as this are devoted to having nothing of interest to say. For my part, I am devoting this post to the uninteresting. The interesting can quickly become uninteresting to the human mind. It takes a bit of attention and thought to make the uninteresting interesting, but it is worth the effort, always.

Beans are a wonderful food. Each bean is a unit of potential energy, easily measurable, and even after digestion still has plenty of bang to spare.

In the winter seasons on Earth, the insects either lie dormant or die off. Most creatures curl up and sleep through the cold in a warren or den or some muddy hole. To whom are humans trying to prove themselves and why?

some new art

Close Encounters: The next 500 years is an art exhibit happening down here in our little city right now. If you can, go have a look at the work. It is all by contemporary aboriginal artists who are peering into the future, or back from the future, or from outer space.

 One piece explores the on-line world of internet gaming and avatars from a Native perspective. The episodic videos depict characters in a virtual, 3D world, as they interact with each other and the "environment". The artists question the place of their "real-world" traditions in a future transformed by technology and made up of other worlds.

Another video installation is projected onto a screen in a bare white room. Getting closer to the flickering colours and shapes it becomes apparent that some of the video is leaking through the screen to the wall behind. Then it becomes clear: this video is being projected onto a screen made out of white feathers.

The beautiful intermingling of vision, ceremony and alternate reality in this show is profound. This is not to say that the gallerists have done anything particularly earth-shattering or different. The set-up is what gallery-goers would expect: clean, clear, well-lit. But the work itself does what well-made art should. It allows you to visit mystic places, to go on a trip, to take a vision quest. I give it a billion stars.

succour

We have a prize-winner! Mr. Kroeker correctly named the "mystery" font of a few days ago as Trebuchet MS. Waves of congratulations go out to him from the luminiferous aether! The prize is a yet to be completed drawing of an undisclosed Martian landmark. Thanks for playing!


A recent debate was aired on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's radio frequency concerning spacing following full-stops in written English. We here at the martian hop favour less spacing, preferring to let the punctuation do the work it was designed to do. There is more than enough space for us to transverse already.

Lately we have been struck by the comparability of human child-rearing with the introduction of sentient extra-terrestrial life to earth. Like a new-born baby, a Martian arriving on Earth will have to re-learn most of what it did naturally on its home world. Breathing, walking, eating, living may all be much different on Earth. A Martian will have to adapt. A Martian will have to become un-Martian. Revealing themselves on Earth in this way could be extremely undesirable. This may explain the whole tendency towards abduction, and fly-bys in saucers. Or perhaps they come to us in the guise of our children, waiting until the moment is right to make their presence known....

trolls from Mars?

Hello people,

We have found evidence of more Martian mind-control on Earth. See the linked article below, actually published in Scientific American in 2008. Please note the date of publication is not April 1st. Don't forget to peruse the comments.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=worlds-first-flying-saucer

If you have enjoyed reading this, you may also be interested in this little Earthling comedy:

a movie recommendation

Hello people of Earth. A second short post for you today because you are who you are. Below is a link to the internet's movie database entry on a film entitled "Santa Claus conquers the Martians". Below that you will find another link to the entire movie, in case you feel like throwing away eighty minutes of your life...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058548/

fonts: part deux

Can anyone guess today's font? If you can, you win a free soda pop, courtesy of the martian hop.

Hint: You already have two hints and the picture is one of them.

fonts

"Comic Sans" is not an available font on this station. This disappoints us. Especially since both Helvetica and Arial, the latter being Microsoft's Helvetica-rip-off, are included. "Comic Sans" is much maligned, rightly or wrongly (who's to say?) but not to have the option of employing it is terrible. Some situations absolutely cry, scream and beg for "Comic Sans". "I <3 Helvetica" [the middle symbol, for those unaware, means "love": it's less than three. The heart has two chambers, not three, unless we're talking about Martian hearts]... where were we? Oh, yes, the unparenthetical statement in the previous sentence is fine when constructed with the good old work-horse "Courier", or even "Helvetica" itself if you're so inclined, but put it in "Comic Sans" and you have a real coup d'espere, or whatever it is. Don'tcha think?

second contact

Maybe the mystery of outer-space was more fresh sixty years ago, in the days before people really knew the amount of effort and resources required just to keep a person alive for any length of time in a tiny steel bubble up there. Sometimes it seems as if the only reason to keep up the charade is to prevent ourselves from looking thoroughly ridiculous in the history books. Or else the funding will dry up if someone isn't pushing for progress: the use-it-or-lose-it effect. All a space programme needs is one really grand discovery now and then to reawaken the glory days and to get everyone talking, writing, what-have-you, again. The human imagination needs to be engaged. It's difficult to make that happen en masse. So much specialized factual knowledge is required to get within ten miles of spitting distance of the reality of space travel now. Sixty years ago when the Martians were in everybody's head, from N.A.S.A. scientist, to Russian cosmo-naut, to school-aged children, imagining was easy. Now it's gotten to damned difficult. What better reason to become a devoted, nerdy, be-spectacled science-fiction nerd? Make second contact!

the legendary Tornados.

no words, just pictures.

piscapalia

In order to prepare ourselves for biosphere-living, we have taken some live fish into our possession. You know the ones, "Alive without breath, as cold as death... all in mail never clinking" et cetera. Today we are trying to think of some names for the new arrivals. The "beta-fish" is Hale-Bopp (Bopp for short) and the scum-sucker of course is named Mr. Collins. I think "Tae" "Kwon" and "Do" work for the tiger barbs, but Mrs. W. wants something literary. "Sir" "William" and "Blake" weren't to her liking. The funniest thing about this is we are taking the most care in naming the three fish who look nearly identical.
Do you, faithful readers, have any suggestions?

an open question

Why are all sentient extra terrestrial life-forms in Star Trek shaped like humans?

sleepy-time

How can you know for certain that a Martian intelligence did not hi-jack the human-built machines that landed on the planet, and then programme them to send us reports of an uninhabitable planet? If I was aware of human behaviour, which I suppose I am, to some extent, that's the course of action I would recommend.
I wonder at the naming of the fourth rock. Calling it the fourth rock isn't really even accurate since that leaves out moons, visiting comets, meteors and our space junk. But why the connection to war? Blood is red, yes. I suppose the idea of a civilization wiping itself and everything else out up there is just too sad for me. We're busy with that task on Earth. Did a few clever minds on Mars send a spark of life to impregnate this planet before all was lost? Did they learn the folly of their ways before it was too late? Are we of Martian lineage then? Is there anybody out there?
I'm going to bed.

heroes and a little something else

People of Earth, if you have not already seen this, please, watch it now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78CTDaR-4sw

The Tornados, ladies and gents.

Don't forget to check the sell-by date on this one:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,919978,00.html

space-age tin

Do you remember toys from the times before plastic was readily available? Tin-toys were abundant when the space-age first dawned on humanity. One could purchase race-cars, wind-up marching pandas, hopping birds, robots, rockets and flying saucer tops. Imaginations that would eventually propel us beyond Earth's gravity were born thanks to these antiquated trinkets. 
We recently played with one of the old flying-saucer spinners. Ingenious design: it cranks up with a vertical screw on top that also has a ratcheting function inside the craft. Let go after pumping the screw up and down while keeping the U.F.O. level, and off it spins. The particular model we were flying had small holes all along its outer rim. While the craft is spinning, these holes produce an eerie, low-pitched wavering hum that just whistles "messengers from the unknown, messengers from distant places".

Such a wonderful mix of Earthling and Extra-terrestrial, functioning as it does thanks to human ingenuity and the Earth's pull, while unfettering the imagination and allowing travel to other worlds.

knowing when you're being insensitive

You just can't be too careful.
The previous post has been deleted. A suspicion that I need to keep away from telling the stories of others prevails. These writings ought not to be too closely discernable as factual. So, apologies. I hope I have done no harm.

apt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veSLdNos7q8

This will rocket you to a different time and place. Fairly relevant to other musings here.

fun and games

Why hello there,
How have you been? It's the "three-man" here. Has anyone played that drinking game before? I don't understand drinking games, exactly. This one didn't make a bit of sense to me, and wasn't much fun at all, until I chugged a bottle of the yeasty stuff first. Then it was fun. Before then it was pretty boring, drinking water, observing, and feeling thirsty from the crisps, yet having to stop myself from drinking because the game hadn't called upon me to do so. But think of it: you're at a party, you want to be sociable and perhaps having some drinks help you loosen up a bit, become gregarious even. Then you sit down to a game at which you must wait your turn to drink. Maybe it would make more sense with shots of the harder stuff, or fewer people, or something. In the end, it became a bit of a hoot anyway. I guess my jury is still out concerning drinking games. I wonder what those observing my mental synapses thought of the whole thing?

conspiracies of old

Subtle mind-control may have been practiced by Martians on Earthlings for some time now. What we humans refer to as "instinct" in dogs, for example, may simply be an effort on the part of an extra-terrestrial intelligence to disgust us. Our canine companion, as do many others of the species, often eats her own frozen feces during the winter. The only evolutionary gain here may just be to sicken the animal's enemies. Or, perhaps she is sending us a message from outer-space? "Earthlings, we laugh at you in disgust, here is an example of how debased you appear to us".

I believe strongly that my own Scottish forebears have been encouraged over time in their cultural and martial pursuits by this space-borne intelligence. Precisely when the Scots began wearing the red pom-pom atop their tams may be a date lost in the annals of history, but it seems difficult to deny the utterly alien features of the young pretender to the throne, the bonnie Prince Charlie.

a brief burst from the mental ray.

Cryptic crosswords provide excellent mental stimulation. I've been taking advantage of one free cryptic crossword puzzle per day. Memory and lateral reasoning skills are worth having. Especially if the Martians have super-human mental abilities and telekinesis.
I inadvertently caused a friend to visit an ugly interweb site. Fooey. Bad guy.
Our canine is a lovely fellow. She turns eleven on the fifteenth. She is at my feet on our couch. Oh, and said friend above, before the dog, has a birthday today. Her friends are quite lovely; I met them at a little gathering this evening. They almost make me content being a human earth-dweller. Too much solitude can do bad things to a person. The girls are Numenorian!
Signing off at 11:38 pm or 23:38. Still averaging one entry per day.

some more typed words

Today there were two very useful information exchanges. One was unassisted, peer-to-peer, off-line, and hands-free with a co-worker. The other was the opposite of the first, with an old friend from the old country. The latter exchange allowed me a peek at some of the old friend's photographic work. It's good stuff. He knows how to frame a shot, how to shoot on the street, and how to develop his work. "Flickr" hosts him. He's HalifaxJ, for the interested.

My further theorizing on Martians, their origins (past and potential), and human conceptions of them continues. Simply thinking about them is not enough, however. I need to make thoughts real, give them a home here on Earth in my version of reality. I have begun to make bright red pom-poms for many of my hats. It is a very relaxing and therapeutic pass-time. Pom-poms are also a bit of a peculiarity in the fashion of the present. THEY STICK OUT.
I used to hate pom-poms. In my youth I was terribly concerned about what others would think and that I would be laughed at. I tore pom-poms off all my stocking caps. Now I am more than comfortable with them. A big red pom-pom for the planet Mars on the peak of my cap, on the horizon of my mind, a symbol for my fixation and for my hope that, should they come, they may choose to visit me.

thoughts?

I have been thinking today about the possibility of legally becoming a Martian. I wonder if there is a lot of bureaucracy to contend with, forms to fill out, queues to wait in, that sort of thing. Does one have to have been born on the planet itself? That would be the first detail to get straight. An affirmative to that question and the whole thing's done before it even gets off the ground.

For now the assumption is no Martian civilization exists on the Red Planet, at least not anymore (or not yet). Perhaps we will find out more anon (Do you net-savvy see what I did there?). Humans are sending probing machines to the crimson sphere through the vast tracts of blackness. Robots have been there. Robots built by humans. Perhaps they are the Martians, at present. I'd prefer the "little green men" myself, though even that notion shares something with the machines: human ideas imposed upon the alien. The sublime wonder of "the other" can so easily be debased. And yet, I still want to know if I can become a Martian. I'm pretty fed up with a lot of the destruction being wreaked upon the Earth by human ideas. There is a good deal of work for a Martian ambassador to do preventing humanity from further "flourishing" on other worlds. That and environmental activism. Or its opposite, I suppose. I'm not sure if such an ambassador would attempt pleading the case of non-human life on Earth or hastening human self-destruction. Then, the alien come to earth may not have any strong feelings either way.

getting around.

Things were looking crisp today, a combination of the frigid temperature outside our heat-bubbles and my very tired eyes and mind. When I made the tremendous effort to actually look at something, that something astonished me with its hard, sharp-edged being: the back of a traffic signal hung on an outstretched arm of metal above the river of fast-flowing rubber, plastic, steel and bodies.
The sky was over-cast today so it was warm enough to fall asleep on a bench outside while waiting for a bus. In the French part of this country, there is a company that provides bus services and goes by a name I quite like: L'autocar.

a lack of sleep

The little green man is still having trouble sleeping. He kept us awake last night for two or three hours. Now he is trying to take his midday nap. I hear him chattering softly in that strange tongue of his as I write. Yesterday we had a communication with the forebears who live on the distant sea-side island. We managed to get the video-phone working. Unca M seemed very pleased to make the connection. We played a bit of music for Gram.
The sun shines brightly today, though it is quite cold. Not so cold as it has been lately, since the wind blows less.
That is all for now.

hippity-hop and you don't stop

Some of us were wondering if this little ditty is a gentle attempt at mockery of the old Napoleonic soldiery. Are they being called timid little bunnies? The male rabbit is known as a buck, and may share some similarities with soldiers of bygone days when libido is considered.


Do your ears hang low?
Do they wobble to and fro?
Can you tie 'em in a knot?
Can you tie 'em in a bow?
Can you throw 'em o'er your shoulder like a continental soldier
Do your ears hang low?
Do your ears stand high?
Do they reach up to the sky?
Do they droop when they are wet?
Do they stiffen when they're dry?
Can you semaphore your neighbor with a minimum of labor?
Do your ears stand high?
Do your ears flip-flop?
Can you use them as a mop?
Are they stringy at the bottom?
Are they curly at the top?
Can you use them for a swatter?
Can you use them for a blotter?
Do your ears flip-flop?
Do your ears stick out?
Can you waggle them about?
Can you flap them up and down as you fly around the town?
Can you shut them up for sure when you hear an awful bore?
Do your ears stick out?

the new way to remember

Our dear friend, let's call her Ms. A, was bitten by a dog today.
She has some sort of agreement worked out with a work-place pal that allows either party a bit of free dog-sitting when going out of town. Today she was doing the sitting, and the dog bit.
Ms. A's friend lives around the corner from us, so she phoned us to ask if we have any band-aids. She dressed the wound here. She wasn't certain if she should go to the hospital for a bite from a dog that she sort-of-knows. It's new year's day, so the hospitals are probably pretty busy. Her leg wasn't hanging off her, and no blood was visible on her clothes. She wondered if, since the bite had been through her jeans and not on bare flesh, whether antiseptic would be necessary. We encouraged her in its application.
And that's the sort of day it's been. Also, one of us had a birthday that all of us celebrated, with Nana and brother G. It was a pretty good one and the chocolate cake was delicious. One might suppose that Holiday-season birthdays are a bit of a let down, but in this case that supposition would be FALSE.
Now I will return to outer space for a bit of sleeping and dreaming.
This is the first post. I would say "I hope you have enjoyed it" but if you are us from the future, I know you will have, and if you are not, then I have no strong feelings either way. You are free from judgement.