Dreamt last night that we were touring a pair of Monasteries - Tibetan style, Buddhist things. Apparently, I wasn't too interested in the firs tone, and had to rush to the second before the bell rang - doors would lock and wild dogs tore apart anyone not inside one of the two feuding temples when the bells summoned them.

The ground between the two buildings slid and shifted... I (much more nimbly than I might've in waking life) leaped from stepping stone to stepping stone, avoiding too-clear water that was running thickly, like syrup. Once on the second place's stairs, the dogs curled up and went to sleep.

The building itself was very nifty - all sorts of oddities inside, not unlike a Ripley's. One was closed off with a curtain - a skeletal mammoth with an elephant-sized, but human shaped skull - save for a single tusk/horn curling upwards from the tip of the chin area of the mandible. I went to take a picture of it, but a guard (I don't recall his garb - if he was a mall security type or a warrior-sort.. I just knew he worked there, wasn't just some guy) told me that it was forbidden. He then smiled at me, took a picture with his cell phone and was promptly gored by the skeleton. The tusk tore a rip in him from crotch to throat and where he opened up, rose petals fell until the body was just an empty skin.

A different member of the monetary showed up and apologized to me - I couldn't attend service, because the priest was shorter than me. However another fellow, taller than me would be available to walk me through services on Tuesday, at 8:30. I asked if he meant morning or night, and he laughed... "Don't you work? - it's at night.. it'll be 8:30 pm to 10pm, then there'll be snacks, bell ringing and wheel turning. Does your wife dance?"

I said that she did, though we really have never been.

I've never been to a Tibetan monastery... now, I suspect that I'll be a bit disappointed.

After telling her about it, BHK says that I'll never get hot dogs grilled with onions and green peppers for dinner again. I hope that's not the case.

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ok these are awesome: http://www.instantrimshot.com/ and http://www.sadtrombone.com/

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Tags: bhk, dream

HOW DARE YOU PRESIDENT BUSH???!!!


YOU ARE A HORRIBLE MAN WHO


WILL STOOP TO NOTHING, TO KEEP


YOUR BLOOD WAR IN IRAQ!!!


QUESTION: AM I WRONG TO FEEL THIS WAY??? WHY???


HAS THIS MAN HIT BELOW THE WAIST???

Bush Compares Obama Democrats To Nazi Hitler



Playgirl's Manhã de Carnaval
Uma das mais belas composições de Luiz Bonfá.




Join The NRA
"The Right Of The People To Keep and
Bear Arms, Shall Not Be infringed."
What do you think about The Right to Bear Arms?

At the police station
Originally uploaded by ConcreteWaffer.

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Tags: external

Queue the banjo music.

Dallas just sentenced a man to 35 years in jail, because he was HIV positive and spit on an officer. I wonder what the rate of transference is for HIV through saliva... hmmm... lets see...

nadda.

If I find myself next to that judge, I will *have* to spit on him. You know, just in case intelligence is contagious.

I will be doing our Hostelling International speech next month. I have made up a Power Point called, "The Grand Hike". I need to do some practicing and refining but I am looking forward to speaking. The speech will be on my hikes in the Grand Canyon. What would be really great is being invited to do the presentation for other groups.

Tonight is a new book club group I will be checking out (still looking for my pack to run with). The books are, "Brave New World" by Huxley, and "The Anthem" by Ann Rand. Both of which I read many, many years ago. I hope I remember enough to participate. My mother was a big Rand fan. I read her works when I was in High School. I have no clue where mom got these three lines but they're things I remember my mother saying....."middle-class morality", "religion is the opiate of the masses", "mindless majority", hummmmm sound like lines that could come from Rand.

Rand's objectivism has not gone over well with the mainstream academia but her books still sell well and I think there is a lot of weight to her arguments.....some stuff I don't think I quite understood until these last few years.

The "self", "selfishness", "selflessness", "self consciousness", "self esteem", "no-self-self", (etc.), are words that we have looked at backwards, forwards, upside-down and inside-out and still manage to have questions remaining that need to be answered. The important thing, in my opinion, is that we are asking the questions and we are accepting that there is never one "pat" answer. I know, that when I look back over my life, the times where I have made "bad" decisions were times that I was NOT being true to myself. Ann Rand's three axioms, existence, identity and consciousness are good places to "jump from" to see where we might land. I am looking forward to the book club tonight.

We live in eternal day. It makes us lay more. We live ion wire flooring so that our excrement will fall through onto the constantly turning belt below, which carries it away. Our beaks have been cut off. And we're cancerous. They call us egg machines.

We're the best egg machines in the world. Twenty-seven thousand of us sit here, our only exercise the laying of an egg, which rolls away from us, down a little chute.

I remember how wonderful it was to peck my way through the shell and step out into the warm bright dawn of life.

I have seen no other sunrise. We live in eternal noontime. My birth was a grievous mistake. And yet an egg is developing in me, as always. I can't stop it. I feel its growth, and despite all my bitterness, tiny surges of tenderness fill me. How I wish I could stop the egg from growing so that I wouldn't have to know these tender feelings. But I can't stop. I'm an egg machine, the best egg machine in the world."

Dr. Rat by William Kotzwinkle

I couldn't finish this book. I only read the first bit of it.

Tags: quote

for those who are visiting here from carol's blog, hello!

if you leave a comment, you'll need to come back (if you'd like) and check the comments section on that specific post of mine to see a reply from me, unless you have an lj account....then of course, it'd be emailed to you.

and for my friends here, carol is the beautiful woman whose wedding i'm shooting in november! can't wait!

and this is where the wedding will take place. :)



oh! yesterday while photographing appliance parts (my new job) for A-1, one of the guys that works there was asking me what else i do with my photography....and he mentioned maybe doing some of him & his girlfriend sometime.
that'd be fun. maybe he'll decide to do it :)

Tags: friends, photography, random, wedding

I'm a few weeks behind on the anime posted on CN... but can I tell you how much I love Ichigo's new look!!!

( Read more... )

It is 10:17 AM Thursday morning and I have been reading for morning devotions a massive expostion on the Second Epistle General of St. Peter by Thomas Adams (Minister of St. Gregory's, London A.D. 1633). I read this volume a couple of years ago. I do not know how far I got into this massive work on Second Peter? I remember carrying this giant book to work to read during lunch. I got out this morning thinking I might quote for Two Cents, but now it all seems a waste of energy. I found out this morning that Solid Grounds Books is reprinting this volume Spring 2008. I highly recommend this classic 17th century Puritan commentary. Like Beeke wrote "though the print is small, the content is rich, and is well worth patient perusal. Here is a feast for ministers and all serious Bible students."

http://www.solid-ground-books.com/books_PrePublicationSpecialOffers.asp


COMMENTARY UPON THE SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER
Thomas Adams, with a New Introduction by Dr. Joel Beeke

CH SPURGEON placed this Puritan Classic on the top of his list of commentaries of Second Peter. In his own words: "Full of quaintnesses, holy wit, bright thought, and deep instruction. We like Adams better in commenting than in preaching. His great work is quite by itself, and in its own way remains unrivalled. We know no richer and racier reading."

JOEL BEEKE said, "Not included in Adams's works, is his magnum opus, A Commentary on the Second Epistle General of St. Peter, an extensive commentary first published in 1633 and last reprinted by Soli Deo Gloria in 1990, and happily, reprinted again now by Solid Ground Christian Books. The work is exegetically reliable and stylistically adept. Much useful theological knowledge is conveyed in striking phrases. Spurgeon commented that this book was the best Puritan commentary printed under James Sherman's editorship. Adams is unsurpassed on Second Peter. Though the print is small, the content is rich, and is well worth patient perusal. Here is a feast for ministers and all serious Bible students."

OVER 900 PAGES OF DOUBLE-COLUMNED EXPOSITION.

Current Mood: contemplative

 

Many years ago, when I worked for a major botanical garden in Florida, I was introduced to the wonders of "real" aloe vera. There was a big collection of succulent plants from the dry regions of the tropics including some truely epic aloes. One of my Peurto Rican assistants was into including a little diced up aloe (the nice clear, medicinal, center of the big serrated leaves)in his lunch every day. He claimed it helped his digestion and soothed an ulcer. I tried some and found it's taste a bit unpleasant. However, it was great to rug the slimey exudant on my hands and any other place on my exterior body that felt dry or irritated. You could slide a long knife into the center of a 15 " leaf, creating a sheath into which you could slide practically ones whole hand into like a healing glove. I got to liking this so much that I became a pest in the aloe garden. Wish I had some of this stuff now. It would be great for my much older body.

Current Location: the desert
Current Mood: a bit dry
Current Music: The Who, Mommas Got A Squeeze Box