FOOTLOOSE AND FREE

 

FOOTLOOSE AND FREE

 

I left Colorado one winter and went to Florida with some friends.

Colorado was all snow...ice...
And

Brrrr...COLD!

I guess there were five of us.

No women went.

All of us pitched in to pay for gas and oil.

This particular truck really liked to drink the oil.

I think most of our money paid for its oil addiction.

Dan was the owner of the truck and he did the driving.

He was a good driver.

It was smooth-sailing to Florida.

I remember the wonderful smell of the tropical warmth as we got closer and closer to Florida.

It was better than any dream.

 

Florida was not the first time that I had seen an ocean.

(I lived in Boston the summer of '68 and visited Revere Beach.

I was not too impressed.
It was gray and polluted.)

 

All of us needed work.

We were all broke.

We stood on a street corner and a man in a big cadillac stopped and rolled down his window.

"You guys want to work?"

One harmonious yell of yes was given.

The man said,

"Get in."

He sped off.

It was a waterbed factory.

Blue waterbeds.

Blue and smelly plastic.

Our duties were two-fold:

Either pack waterbeds into boxes or pull apart waterbeds that had just come "out" of the waterbed machines.

Sometimes the plastic was still warm when you separated the waterbeds at their seams.

When I packed the beds into boxes, I sometimes would write little poetic messages on the boxes.

I don't know if the people who got the boxes liked this or not, but I enjoyed doing it.

Only Dan had a place to sleep.

He slept in his truck.

I slept wherever I could.

Hotel lawns.

The beach.

It seemed like I stayed up most of my days and nights when I wasn't working.

I enjoyed walking up and down the beach.

Watching.

One night I met a woman who was wearing a long fur coat, and had on one of those huge hats with a lot of feathers that women used to wear.

She had long, red hair and dark, green eyes.

We started walking on the warm sand.

Talking.

About what I really don't recall.

She offered me some tranquilizers.

I swallowed a couple.

The warm ocean breeze, the pounding waves, and walking with this beautiful woman that had red hair and green eyes, bathed my senses in pleasure, especially when we kissed.

We kissed a lot.

She looked at me and said,

"You look like Clint Eastwood."

I was going to disagree, but figured that I shouldn't spoil a good thing.

I even started to talk like Clint Eastwood.

What a cool dude.

It turned out that she had two children, and was separated from her husband.

The night that I visited her apartment she played George Harrison's song My Sweet Lord.

The song was appropriate for the mixed-up emotions I was having.

She and I didn't stay together and we went our separate ways.

But it was fun while it lasted.

Her name was Jackie.

One moonless night as I was sauntering down the beach, I squinted my eyes and saw a person out in the middle of the crashing waves, standing on a large rock.

I yelled,

"Hey, what are you doing?"

He replied,

"I'm going to kill myself."

I shouted back,

"Don't do that. Come here and I'll buy you a cup of coffee."

That did the trick.

He got off of the wave-battered rock and walked over to me.

"Thanks", he said. "If you hadn't showed up I would have jumped."

I bought him a cup of coffee.

We didn't talk that much.

Then he walked away.

I don't know if he tried to kill himself again.

Maybe he did this as a way to get people to buy him food and drinks.

IT'S ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES STUPID!

 

 

 

UNPLUGGED

 

Unplugged!

Freedom!

Cleansing of the senses!

What am I talking about?

I’m talking about no longer having dozens of cable stations to watch.

I don’t miss watching all of those news programs.

The chatter and clatter are gone!

I’ve opened the windows of my soul!

I mean, I’ve liberated my mind--- and my consciousness---from the addiction of listening to and watching pundits and politicians blah-blahing about this, that, and the other!

Silence!

More time for dreaming, reading, and scribbling.

I had been stuffing my noggin with too much information.

What did I do with all of that data? 

Where did it go?

Where did it take me?

I’m not sure, but after a couple of days of withdrawal, I don’t miss a thing.

Try it, you’ll like it.

 

 

IT’S ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES STUPID!

TRILOBITE INSIGHT

TRILOBITE INSIGHT

Did a trilobite have

Teeth?

How much could a trilobite

 Eat?

How big were a trilobite’s

Feet?

How old could a trilobite be?

Did the trilobite have a

Tail light or

Inner light?

Could the trilobite

 See starlight?

Did a trilobite have

Second sight?

What killed off the

Trilobite!?!

 

IT'S ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES STUPID!

 

*

TRILOBITE FACTS

Scientists unearthed 515-million-year-old fossil remains of a pair of Anomalocaris eyes. The superpredator's eyes had 32,000 lenses - all the better to stalk their prey.

Jeepers, creepers, where did the Cambrian ocean's top predator get those peepers?

Scientists from Australia and Spain have unearthed 515-million-year-old fossil remains of a pair of eyes the researchers associate with an undersea creature known as Anomalocaris.

Each of the shrimp-like animal's two pear-shaped eyes sported at least 16,000 hexagonal lenses. This would have given the 3- to 6-foot-long creatures vision as keen as the sharpest-eye insect today, the dragon fly.

 

Age of Trilobites

o    The oldest trilobite fossils date from the Cambrian geological era, over 500 million years ago. Specimens of this age have been found in Canada, Morocco, Russia, Spain and the United States. Trilobites were abundant on the earth for eons, but became extinct before the age of dinosaurs began some 250 million years ago.

Physical Characteristics

o    Trilobites had a three-lobed body, which is the characteristic for which they were named. The frontal lobe or head is called the cephalon. The center lobe or body is the thorax and the tail is known as the pygidium. This segmented body was flexible enough to allow the trilobite to roll into a ball for protection against predators. As the trilobite grew, it shed its exoskeleton periodically and grew a new one in a process called molting. Most trilobite fossils are actually the impressions left by the discarded molts.

Types

o    Many different types of trilobites roamed the ancient seas. Paleontologists have identified 10 distinct orders with more than 20,000 species. This tremendous diversity is one of the main reasons trilobites are studied so extensively around the world. Some species were tiny and would have been barely visible in water. But there were also giants. The largest trilobite fossil on record measures more than 28 inches in length and was found in Canada.

Trilobite Firsts

o    Scientists have discovered many interesting facts through the detailed study of perfectly preserved trilobite fossils. Trilobites were the first animal to develop compound eyes which are common in many insects today. According to Dr. Sam Gon, an internationally recognized trilobite expert, the eyes were very advanced and provided excellent depth of field with very little image distortion. They were also the first creatures to have multiple appendages that allowed them to move quickly along the sea floor.

Fossil Locations

o    Although trilobite fossils are common in most parts of the world, some locations are recognized for yielding specimens of exceptional quality. The Burgess Shale in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, Canada, has produced some of the oldest and most detailed fossils ever found. In the United States, the House Range in western Utah and Coal County, Oklahoma, produce some of the best trilobite specimens.
http://www.ehow.com/about_6327831_trilobite-fossils.html

 

 

 

 

RUFUS AND SNOWBALL

Letters from Mad Plato

 

D.H. Lawrence

Born:

	11 September 1885(1885-09-11) Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom Died:
	2 March 1930 (aged 44) Vence, France

I named my cat Frieda.
At the time---well, for some time---I was enamored with the writing of D.H. Lawrence.
Frieda was the name of Lawrence's wife.
They did not want to get married, but eventually did.
She left her German professor-husband---and her children---and ran away with Lorenzo---gadding about all over the world.

I didn't like Lawrence's short stories or novels as much as I liked his poems.
They had Beauty and Brevity.

I got my kitten, Frieda, from a buddy-muscian-poet, Paul Santoro.
His cat, the mother of Frieda, was a Calico.
Paul said before handing over little Frieda,
"Now take care of her."
And I said that I would.

One winter I left Frieda with some friends so that I could traipse off to a warmer place.
I asked my friends to take care of Frieda.
"Don't let her go outside."
When I returned from my wanderings a few months later, Frieda had given birth to two kittens.
One friend said to me,
"We tried to pull her apart from the other cat, but we couldn't do it."

I gave names to the two little fur balls.
One I named Rufus.
He had a little mole on his nose.
The other kitten I named Snowball.
She was as cute as any kitten can be.

I could barely feed myself, and really didn't want to take care of Frieda's brood.
So one summer day I put notes around the necks of Rufus and Snowball.
"PLEASE GIVE ME A HOME."
I left them in the alley behind my apartment.
I returned to the alley a few hours later, and there was Snowball, trotting behind a lady, with her tail pointed to the sky, happy as a lark.
Rufus returned to the apartment that night.
He entered through one of the window panes of the skylight on top of the apartment's roof.

Frieda ran away.
I never saw her again.
I thought that this was appropriate, knowing that her namesake had done the same thing.
The Calico mother was picked up by a hawk while Paul was coming back across the desert from California.

IT'S ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES STUPID!

JOBS JOBS JOBS

 

  

“…there are two distinct groups, hypochondriacs and alarmists.  Both suffer in their own ways, and traits of one group may overlap the other, but whether you’re a hypochondriac or an alarmist, at this point in time, either is probably better than being a Republican.”

Woody Allen

Ah, heck, go ahead; build a “Death Star”. 

It will help the economy. 

Jobs, jobs, jobs.

$850 quadrillion (however much that is) could create at least a billion jobs. 

Do the math.

Well, maybe don’t do the math.

It may take too long.

 

Go ahead, get going, and start building this “Death Star”. 

We need a defense against Planet X, or some other planet that may want to blow up the earth (before we have a chance to.) 

Halliburton needs the business, what with two wars about to end.

And why wait for Jeb Bush to win in 2016.

 

Build the “Death Star” before it’s too late. 

Let’s not disappoint the Mayans one more time.

 

P.S., $850,000,000,000,000,000=850 quadrillion

 

*

Associated PressAssociated Press

Posted: 01/12/2013 03:16:01 PM MST

WASHINGTON (AP) - A "Death Star" won't be a part of the U.S. military's arsenal any time soon.

More than 34,000 people have signed an online petition calling on the Obama administration to build the "Star Wars" inspired super-weapon to spur job growth and bolster national defense.

But in a posting Friday on the White House website, Paul Shawcross, an administration adviser on science and space, says a Death Star would cost too much to build - an estimated $850 quadrillion - at a time the White House is working to reduce the federal budget.

Besides, Shawcross says, the Obama administration "does not support blowing up planets."

The U.S., Shawcross points out, is already involved in several out-of-this-world projects, including the International Space Station, which is currently orbiting Earth with a half-dozen astronauts.

 

IT’S ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES STUPID!