MonkOut

My ventures of late outside the Burrow continue to lead me into undesired but either morally necessary or just plain unavoidable encounters-unto-conflicts (expressed or a hair's breadth from being expressed) with raving flailing nutcases, scofflaw immigrants...And such (I'm trying to avoid Bad Words).  And tonight is the next-to-last episode of Monk --!!!!!!!!!  I'm seriously considering going to live with AMBROSE.

R.I.P. Uga / Deformed Breeds

 Uga (pronounced UH-geh) VII, The University of Georgia's beloved and hereditary mascot, has died at the hardly-mor'n-a-pup age of 4 years. By (capital B, no modifying adjective) Bulldog standards, he was gorgeous... But Bulldog standards are the problem.

http://www.akc.org/breeds/bulldog/index.cfm Note how extremeness is built into the show ideal. Callous human conceit from the showdog world deformed the original, functional bulldog into a collection of unhealthy, cartoonish exaggerations that have caused untold misery for the animals--and their sympathetic owners, the latter of whom, unless they were rescue-adopters, came to grievous lessons in the mistakenness of perpetuating signal deformity. At overlong last, responsible efforts are being made to correct these sources of affliction and grotesquery:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5512620.ece

Several attempts have been made successfully, and continue to be made, of restoring the original, healthy bulldog type. Some can be found perusing breed links found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldog_breeds

It's easy, seeing winsome pictures of dogs and cats with short legs and concaved noses, to understand some of the urge we humans have to DEFORM (that's what it truly IS) animals in ways that make them seem more endearing to us--like (breeding to perpetuate) achondroplastic dwarfism, which gives them a pseudo-babyish physiognomy, or other mutations that have served more functional purposes. Some of these selectively bred mutations are harmless, or even truly helpful to the domestic creature as well as to human wants. There are wild canids and felids and other carnivores with short legs. Whether the domesticated species ought to have them when their nearest wild relatives do not is at least questionable--though recognized histories of breed problems with such things should never be trivialized. There is also a kind of latent intelligent design that morphologically relates to selectively breeding wild species for a calm, friendly (thus domesticable) disposition:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tame_Silver_Fox

But, when mutation and other breeding practices obviously have resulted in building ill health (including psychological ill health) INTO breeds, we should stop perpetuating those breeds, at least in the same unhealthy form.

The Ugas have been darlings, as have innumerable misshapen individuals, God bless 'em all. The Elephant Man was sweet and saintly, but arncha glad he didn't add to the gene pool! If his deformities were 'cute' but caused him as much affliction, the same principles should apply... And apply to animals, too.

We must stop breeding animals to have miserable lives (however nobly thy may bear them!) on account of our own conceits. I hope and pray that the University and the Sieler family will set a good example and choose the next Uga from one of the classically formed bulldog breeds. The Peachtree State even has its own breed: The Antebellum Bulldog!

Payin' for Pavin' Paradise...

Tony Barboza's story from the Los Angeles Times, Nov. 6th:
'Developer ordered to pay settlement for draining Huntington Beach Wetland'
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-wetlands-fine6-2009nov06,0,1471823.story

Lovely Garden 'Hood: The South Bronx

I can't get the URL below to go hyperlinky properly, but this is a great story of local stalwarts reclaiming the worst street of 'the worst slum in America', standing fast for what was right against 'expert' outsider notions, and making a charming, clean, safe suburb of individual family homes in what had been a burning Gehenna (Charlotte Street, the South Bronx).  A truly wonderful story.  Those who effected it ought to be given the Medal of Freedom.  Copy and paste this whole URL to your taskbar and click 'Go':
http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/09/real_estate/greatest_neighborhood_turnaround/index.htm?icid=main|
htmlws-main-n|d|8|link4|http://money.cnn.com/11/09/real_estate/greatest/neighborhood/turnaround/index.htm
 

R.I.P Edward Woodward

See him in Breaker Morant, The Wicker Man, and The Equalizer (among others).  No matter how complex or high in probity the characters he played, one always believed them to be true, full, high-and-wide lives.  Standing O's and deep bows from the audience.  Gloriously Ever-Living Peace be with you, noble Edward Woodward!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/2914603.stm
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1228216/Screen-veteran-Edward-Woodward-dies-79.html

Happy 60th Anniversary to GOLDEN GUIDES

Favorite books and friends forever: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Guide !!! Hugs 'n wuv fum Mummy, Sweeties!

Roger Corman for President?

Pop-shlock filmmaker Roger Corman is getting an honorary Oscar this Saturday (Nov. 14, '09). It's probably because (1) he's '...Never Lost a Dime' (part of the title of his autobio), and (2) has otherwise been so influential: (a) as a mentor to others who make high-risk, wildly expensive, often arty and Oscar-winning epics, and (b) showing that the greatest profit$$$$ are usually made by aiming 'entertainment' at the limbic, the id, the lowest-common-denominator dipstick demographic.


Since the office of the PrezUS, and any other Major Power head-of-government is, de facto, an office in which willingness to be a MEGA-MASS-MURDERER is presumed and usually acted-upon, and that (war) continues to be immensely POPULAR with the cannon-fodder masses (especially when the powers-that-be in their countries save all the peaceful jobs for slavey foreigners), it makes a kind of sense that the office ought to go to someone who is unabashed, un-conflicted and un-hypocritical in enthusiasm for splatter, yet has a qualified, experienced and positively-tested engineer's ability to plan things ahead so precisely that we (as in, the Actual Teeming Masses Public, as opposed to the Plutocracy) Never Go Over a Small Budget and Always Make a Profit.

Now, I would rather we all, once and forever, would Try to Do What Jesus Said for Us to Do when He wasn't being wildly ironic ... Or at least would insist that prezzies would do, and we be the kind of benign ideal thing* ever churned out in big speeches, without it being (at least,subliminally) understood and effected as Orwellian Newspeak (*like 'we are a peace-loving nation which upholds equal rights and comforts the poor and downtrodden' [stress-induced deranged laughter ensues]). But, since there's much less chance of that than of Roger Corman becoming President-- well, then, imagine If Roger Corman Were President!

Hymn to Him

This is a liturgical hymn of the Greek Orthodox Church.  Christians of different denominations may take exception to bits of it-- (I'm un-'organized', myself: Apostle's & Nicene Creeds okay without the fussy nitpicking that led to the filioque schizm and all; Pauline on the Law, believe Jesus takes all sins and affliction on Himself to reconcile/make ALL things like unto Himself; has been given ALL by the Father and loses none (and so, don't accept all the [almost identical] Athanasian Creed or Fundamentals); believe that trying to live intelligently by the Golden Rule is the most essentially important thing we can do in this life; insofar as politics, art, or being 'green': What is most benign to sentient beings trumps other considerations.) --but surely most will find it magnificently righteous, faithful and sublimely beautiful:
http://www.monarchos.net/content/liturgics/liturgical-texts/235-akathist-to-our-sweetest-jesus-christ

Michael Jackson and Mythology

An old (Feb. '03) post of mine to Google Groups:  alt.mythology.  Still food for myth-fans' thoughts:
The man* has made the theme of his post-'The Jacksons!' work--and, perhaps, life: TO BE BEYOND GRASP.

I am by no means assuming criminal behavior on his part...Or even 'multiple personalities' in the classic pathological sense of quite separated 'selves' in a single body which might be ignorant of each others' sensations, thoughts and actions. I think that MJ might hold his purpose in life to be an example of something else: Other choices, and of being caught, but not quite.

It is possible that he is a father via sperm donation, but may technically be a virgin. He may be a child molester, a 'Smooth Criminal', 'Bad', and metaphorically a zombie, a pardanthrope, a ghost, and a self-deifying demagogue-king--or he may be a relative innocent, defensively playing with appearances of being Things of Horror and Intimidation the way children, and basically harmless animals, and all of us betimes do, to gain power and space.

He may be living out the perpetually ignored implications of Jesus's words regarding little children:'...for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.' (He also said, 'The Kingdom of God is within.') Is he 'Black or White'?--yes and no!  His sexual persuasion may be that he doesn't have any. His name is extraordinarily common, yet when spoken, it is his image that almost always first and uniquely springs to mind.

His feeling toward 'the public' seems to be that of someone raised to be a perpetual sacrificial victim, giving and receiving a strange sort of love-mixed-with-horror, mutually devouring. --You could liken his to
practically every example in The Golden Bough in that respect, alone. Like the meriahs of the Khonds, or modern mythology about the 'Illuminati Families', Jackson seems torn between wanting to protect his children from those who want him to give over his and offspring's lives to them, and a feeling that their fate is inevitable...And the 'bargain' for the seasons of luxury and exaltation.

He could retire and make a truly private life for himself and his children--not the normalcy of the never-rich-&-famous, but he could change his appearance again, to something unrecognizable as 'Michael Jackson', and
nevermore present himself to the crowds--nor feel the need to mask his children. Perhaps that is among his future plans! Has he ever relaxed?

Hypothetically, he could--but he may be unable to escape the conviction that he must keep moving; keep ELUDING not to be consumed by his holocaustic childhood and predatory public.

Besides his resemblance to the figures of the Divine Child--or Changeling!--and the Sacrificial God-King, he is, of course, elvish (.........................PAUSE FOR LISA MARIE JOKES.........) and a Shape-Shifter. Then there is Orpheus...The Ratcatcher/Pied Piper...By his own words, Peter Pan (harking back to Pan, from The Wind in the Willows's glowing epiphany to TERROR ANTIQUUS, to Hallet & Pelle's far-out speculation in PYGMY KITABU). There is Victor Hugo's Gwynneplaine (sp.?)'THE MAN WHO LAUGHS'--being
affected more and more by the elective-surgery indecision...To be Diana Ross? No, Elizabeth Taylor? No, Tyrone Power? No, Vishnu? ...With the result threatening toward (the sanitized, Andrew Lloyd Webber version of) Erik the PHANTOM OF THE OPÉRA (or his 'French Wold Newton Universe' kin). Misunderstood Boo Radley of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD...And Darkman.

Add yours. Would Mr. Jackson embrace them all?
_________________

*Pop-Up Videos, perhaps mendaciously, said that London bookie odds ran 500-1 that Michael and LaToya were the same person. 8-o !

TRUly wonderful: Mini Guide Horses for the Blind

This is not a joke; it's a revelation.  Amazingly adorable and animal-angelically useful: http://www.guidehorse.org/

Mega-atrocities in western New Guinea

My general intention is to stay out of politics here, except relatively mild commentary on 'green' issues. I also may do a lot of reprints from copyright-free stuff I like.  However~~~Just came across this mass of horror that seems to be ignored by the media and scarcely known to crusading celebrities (such of those who forced attention on Darfur).  It's REALLY bad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_western_New_Guinea .

'Edit Posts' doesn't work for me

That's the message, basically, so my posts will likely continue to be crude, though I hope not in a nasty way.  When I went to the 'Edit Posts' page and summoned up my (till this is published, my first and only) post, as soon as I highlighted the portions I wanted to change, the page flipped back to the original Edit Posts list page...repeatedly. A Blogger article entitled 'How do I edit my own posts' apparently no longer exists, and scouting the various 'Help' options reminded me of US war policy of the last 60 years:  Stuck in Big Muddy and delving ever deeper.  Oh!  And trying this post on the 'Preview' window scares up something that looks different than what I wrote/am writing in 'New Posts', and won't change.    Fooey.  Fie. Gentle Reader, you have been warned.  God bless you.     

California: Nature by Wikipedia, # 1

This is my first post.   Chicken-try by way of copying an old saved-mail to myself from personally re-edited (which is to say, snipped and commented-on) Wikipedia stuff, which I understand is copyright-free.  I can't get the LINKS to work as such; everything is plain-text.  So...If you're interested, just do the all-purpose Wikipedia URL thing:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/   (--hey!  that just showed up colored and underlined like a hyperlink!  Is it really??  Someday I may figure out how to do this stuff right!  But don't hold your breath.  Anyway...)  and add/paste the things I've boldfaced, remembering to separate the words by underscores instead of the usual spacing, like this:  Category:Natural history of California (becomes) Category:Natural_history_of_California .

This category has the following 4 subcategories, out of 4 total. Endemic fauna of California (1) Flora of California (3) Geology of California (2) Natural disasters in California (4)
Ecology of the Sierra Nevada | List of mammals in California 
Categories: Natural history of the United States by state  |  Environment of California
 Flora of the San Francisco Bay Area | Plant communities of California | Trees of California | Ecology of the United States by state | Environment of CaliforniaThe ecology of California is diverse: It is considered to span six biogeographic provinces: "Coastal Chaparral Forest and Shrub","Dry Steppe","Coastal Steppe, Mixed Forest, and Redwood Forest","Sierran Steppe/Mixed Forest/Coniferous Forest","Coastal Range Open Woodland/Shrub/ Coniferous Forest/Meadow", and "American Semi-Desert and Desert".

Botanists generally consider the California chaparral and woodlands, Sierra Nevada forests, Central Valley grasslands, Northern California coastal forests, and Klamath-Siskiyou as a single California Floristic Province, which does not include the deserts of eastern California, which belong to other floristic provinces. Many Bioregionalists, including poet Gary Snyder, identify the central and northern Coast Ranges, Klamath-Siskiyou, the Central Valley, and Sierra Nevada as Alta California or the Shasta Bioregion.

Semi-desert and desert
California's high mountains block most moisture from reaching the eastern parts of the state, which are home to California's desert and xeric shrub ecoregions. The low desert of southeastern California is part of the Sonoran desert ecoregion, which extends into Arizona and parts of northern Mexico. Southern California's high deserts constitute the Mojave desert ecoregion, which has affinities to the Great Basin shrub steppe, which covers California's Owens Valley and Modoc Plateau, as well as most of neighboring Nevada.

Coastal chaparral
The southern and central Coast Ranges, including the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles region, comprise the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion, which extends across the Mexican border into northwestern Baja California. The California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion contains numerous plant communities, including oak savanna, oak woodland, conifer woodlands, chaparral, coastal sage scrub, and coastal grassland; these plant communities often occur as a mosaic, with patches of distinct plant communities situated in response to site conditions, including variations in sun exposure (north or south slopes), wind exposure, and soils, and variations in rainfall between wetter seaward slopes and the drier 'rain shadow' on the landward slopes.

Dry steppe
California's Central Valley was once a large temperate grassland, the California Central Valley grasslands ecoregion, which was formerly home to great herds of grazing pronghorn and elk; some writers have referred to it as "America's Serengeti". The Central Valley has been mostly converted to farms and rangeland; its once great seasonal wetlands have been drained and its perennial bunch grasses replaced by exotic annual grasses or farm fields, but patches of the native bunchgrasses still exist, as do some of the small seasonal wetlands known as vernal pools.

Temperate coniferous forests
The mountains of northern California have a cooler and wetter climate, and are home to temperate coniferous forests, including the Sierra Nevada forests, Northern California coastal forests, Klamath-Siskiyou forests, and Central and Southern Cascades forests. These forests are home to some of the world's largest trees, the Coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) of the Northern California coastal forests, and the Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum), which lives in scattered groves in the Sierra Nevada forests. The highest peaks are home to tundra, fellfields (stony ground with patches of meadow), and krummholz (dwarf forests).