Don't worry, something will certainly happen. Peace and love may yet overtake the world. Prices may yet fall. Limitations may vanish. Pigs might fly. The sun might shine from my ass. Almost anything is possible, right?

We're snowed in now, the first significant fall of the season, here at 3500 feet in the central Sierra Nevadas. Giant iceworms have migrated from the North and now threaten to devour hapless pedestrians trudging through the drifts. Our propane supply is down 40% in two weeks. Can we last? For how long?

Meanwhile... whatever. Forget about politics, religion, economics, artistry. Just concentrate on the moment. Which moment? Any moment. Pick a moment and there you are. Ommm....

Only one month till Valentine's Day. Rip your heart out now, get it over with. Why wait? Take a full 31 days to contemplate your emotions, if any. And be glad that next Friday isn't another Inauguration Day.

But today is wet and rich again, hovering around freezing at midday, not fit for outside photography, not with rain to hail (and thunder) to snow. Yesterday I finished editing all the pictures I shot since our return from Alaska-Arizona. Now, to get to the remaining 2/3s of the Mexico-Honduras images, then all the Canada-Alaska stuff. I haven't counted the untold thousands of frames involved. I don't dare.

Meanwhile, I'm off-and-on reading/skimming the 1939 WPA GUIDE TO CALIFORNIA, especially those parts about our current and previous locales and other well-trod routes. I mentally overlay memories upon the 67-year-old descriptions and note the changes, like those Binford & Mort Early California-Oregon atlases that where 1884 postal routes are background for 1979 highway maps. Hmmm, another form of time travel: display layers of maps of various years, bringing each to more or less transparency in sequence, to show the evolution of human usage.

Friday 13 January 2006

I'm busy editing pictures. It keeps me from spewing words. Lucky you.

Thursday 12 January 2006

Did anything happen yesterday? I was busy, I didn't notice. Whatever.

Wednesday 11 January 2006

Something may happen today, or I may just edit pictures and sleep.

Tuesday 10 January 2006

Recover from yesterday's long drive. Wait for rain/snow here. Brrr...

Monday 9 January 2006

Over the snowy Sierra Nevadas to Reno. And back in the dark, ALIVE!

Sunday 8 January 2006

Less bad, but nothing to write home about. See Animal Souls (find).

Saturday 7 January 2006

You don't want to know; trust me. But at least I got the emails out.

I'm finally back to editing digital pictures, a thousand of 'em since we got back. I've still got half or more of the Mexico shots to do, and I haven't even touched the Canada-Alaska collection yet. Yow. Lots of keyboarding ahead. There go my fingers.

Meanwhile, a beautiful day. We take a nice long lugubrious walk down the ridge in rolling sunshine, yelled at by squirrels and dogs and chainsaws. Mountain Misery Road isn't miserable but I'm worn out again and skip a family dinner over at InLaws Chateau. Oh, the news: Ariel Sharon didn't die but Lou Rawls did. Someone (probably during WWII) told Charles de Gaulle, "Sir, you are indispensible." He replied, "The cemetaries are filled with indispensible men."

Robert Park reports, "Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted viral infection in the U.S., and the cause of almost all cervical cancers. At least half of U.S. adults have been infected, though not all with the deadliest strains. It's even more serious in developing countries where screening is not available. Nevertheless, New Scientist magazine quotes Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council, a leading Christian lobby group: 'Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful because they may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex.' While hailing the vaccine as a great medical advance, the Family Research Council is concerned that widespread inoculation would infringe on parental consent or perhaps it would infringe on divine retribution."

Whatever happens to humans is divine will. Fighting disease, forestalling doom, preventing punishment — these all thwart divine will. G0D WANTS YOU TO SUFFER!! At least, that's how fundy jeezoids read their bibles. Listen up, folks: these nuts are taking over the GOP, taking over the US, and THEY WANT YOU TO SUFFER FOR THEIR BELIEFS. Will you go quietly? Oh yeah, they hate all science too. Be very afraid. But maybe you can escape on your broomstick. Get going now.

Forecast: We're scheduled to go down the mountain today. But not too far, 'cause I'm not out of granola yet. Will the sun shine long enough for us to see anything or walk anywhere? That's doubtful.

Reality: A bit of downhill shopping (thrift shops and foodstuffs), some strolling around Sutter Creek. SC is so nearby yet we get there so rarely, a tarted-up tourist town that's only doable a few times a year. We see the Sutter Creek Shuffle: shops come, shops go, shops move. Shops we like but don't patronize (because we're jubilado, retired) are gone or going. Such dynamism results from dependence on visiting goodie-grubbers, eh?

Goodbye, Sharon:   With Ariel Sharon's massive stroke and likely side­lining, any "two-state option" (based on giving Palestinians control over a large portion of the West Bank) is likely dead. Reverend Pat Robertson aka Bat Rabidson said the stroke was divine punishment for dividing God's land. Spoken like a true Xian, eh?

Of course, the Reverend promotes praying in public, and Jesus said not to pray in public, so whatever god the Reverend follows, it ain't Jesus. And the Second Commandment says, NO GRAVEN IMAGES (ie no pictures), but the Reverend swarms with graven images, his book covers all feature his own picture. And the Sixth Commandment says, DO NOT KILL (ie don't kill), but the Reverend has called for assassinations, and has provided materiel support (guns and money) for death squads. So whatever code of conduct the Reverend follows, it ain't the Ten Commandments.

The Reverend's spokescritter says that his (many) critics just don't like his quoting scripture. Seems to me that the Reverend just quotes those passages that he finds convenient and ignores the rest. Hey, there are MANY commandments about how to prepare and consume food, but I've never heard him promoting Kosher cuisine. Go figure.

OK, I slaved over the keyboard early and restructured my Photo Notes a bit, putting all the Sightings into their own page. And I churned out some creativity ideas. Am I just wasting time? And I still don't know why tables that look fine under IE just go totally batshit under Firefox. Sacre bleu!

Later: Maureen goes Ginny-sitting. I go to sleep. The sun emerges while we're gone. Damn, missed it again. Tomorrow is another day. KPFA plays old Grateful Dead concert tapes, reminding us that yesterday (33-37 years ago) was another day too. And I wasn't even there. Or was I? Somewhere in the vicinity, anyway. What a coincidence!

For some reason, maybe thinking of KPFA, I'm reminded of a music composition technique I've used, Modal Serialism. I feel a need to document that. Read about it here if you have nothing better to do.

Meanwhile, there's the Jack Abramoff news. Massive bribery and ripoffs and even murder. Bribery of many politicians, all the way up to US$100K to GW Bush for services rendered. Many evangelicals are implicated too. Will scores of (mostly GOP) pols all up and down the food chain be indicted? Is it really impeachment time? Better ask, is Abramoff securely protected? Don't be surprised if there's some terrible accident. Gosh, those things happen. Tsk tsk. Move along, folks, nothing to see here.

Tedious, as usual. It's a gloomy Tuesday kind of thing. Whatever. But I'd better get my ass in gear. Time is running out. Don't you hate when that happens? Especially when the radio gets scratchy.

Maureen searches online for travel deals. I join in. We look at options for the Mediterranean (hey, cheap stays in Malta!) and Guatemala (not on Overstock.Com) and Kerala, India (not quite). That's why I have to get my ass in gear — sell some stuff, make money so we can travel. We gotta get outa this place, away from the gloom, back into the sun.

Meanwhile, I leaf through a fat folder of old New Music CDs — minimalist, maximalist, pre- and post-classical, 20th century stuff that almost nobody I know likes. John Cage - In a Landscape plays right now, toy and pre­pared pianos, etc. I had a dream of reviewing this whole folder, preferably whilst RVing. The plan: every night, slip on the headphones and listen to one CD, then record my impressions. OK, that might happen someday. But not right away. Before the heat death of the universe, maybe.

My Lady Nicotine   "With the introduction of tobacco England woke up from a long sleep. Men who had hitherto only concerned themselves with the narrow things of home put a pipe into their mouths and became philo­sophers. Poets and dramatists smoked until all ignoble ideas were driven from them. Petty jealousies no longer had hold of statesmen, who smoked, and agreed to work together for the public weal. Soldiers and sailors felt, when engaged with a foreign foe, that they were fighting for their pipes. The whole country was stirred by the ambition to live up to tobacco."

Also see Kate Chopin's An Egyptian Cigarette

Let it snow. No, wait, belay that command. Let the sun shine down softly through drifting cumulus clouds. Tomorrow, let us drive over Carson Pass, safely past the avalanche chutes, to Carson City and Reno Nevada for some shopping and sightseeing and photography and fresh desert air. Let us loop around Lake Tahoe for more visual input. Let us stay over in Reno at the Sands Regency (special rate: US$15 per night) on the (no-smoke) top floor, overlooking a vast Renoscape.

Meanwhile, gloomy cold rain pounds down upon us from gloomy gray skies through gloomy dark trees etc. The mountain slopes cast café au lait runoff downhill towards the golf-course goose pond, the ravenous stream-cut gorges, the soggy Sacramento-San Joaquin delta (where levees erode daily), the blighted San Francisco Bay, the murky Pacific Ocean, etc. And the roads above us are closed by avalanches and accidents and actuaries. Winter stomps in like a drunk Santa Claus. Bother.

Abdurrahman Wahid writes, "Osama bin Laden has obtained a religious edict from a misguided Saudi cleric, justifying the use of nuclear weapons against America... Imagine the impact of a single nuclear bomb detonated in New York, London, Paris, Sydney or L.A.!" I expect misguided retribution, against anyone appearing to be Muslim, would be swift and savage. A war of civilizations? But William Osborne writes of the Pentagon's "creation of long-term, genocidal sectarian chaos to wear down opposition to the U.S." Osama was a CIA creation. Is the alleged nuclear threat just a ploy to advance oppressive globalization? Hmmm...

Flying into the new year on wings of ducks, we are. Wet wet wet. Stay home, do the usual stuff: Maureen dubbing and/or fiddling about, me keyboarding and/or redoing my deskscape and/or sleeping. Go outside? Onto the front porch for a few seconds, maybe. Otherwise we're rather hermetically sealed for now.

AP - Top 10 News Stories, 2005: 1) Hurricane Katrina; 2) Papal trans­ition; 3) Iraq occupation; 4) Supreme Court vacancies; 5) Oil prices; 6) London bombings; 7) Kashmir quake; 8) Terri Schiavi; 9) CIA-Plame leak; 10) Bush's struggles; 11) Saddam Hussein trial.

GLM - Top 10 Words, 2005: 1) Refugee; 2) Tsunami; 3) Poppa / Papa / Pope; 4) Chinglish; 5) H5N1 (flu virus); 6) Recaille (scum, rabble, dregs); 7) Katrina; 8) Wiki; 9) SMS (text messaging); 10) Insurgent.

GLM - Top 10 Phrases, 2005: 1) Out of the mainstream; 2) Bird / Avian flu; 3) Politically correct; 4) North-South divide; 5) Purple finger / thumb (Iraq vote); 6) Climate change / global warming; 7) String theory; 8) Golden Quadrilateral (Indian highway); 9) Jumping the couch (Tom Cruise); 10) Deferred success.

GLM - Top 10 Global YouthSpeak Words, 2005: 1) Crunk; 2) Mang; 3) A'ight; 4) Mad; 5) Props; 6) Bizznizzle; 7) Fully; 8) Fundoo; 9) Brill! 10) S'up. Top words, 2004: 1) Word; 2) Peace or peace out; 3) Proper. Most Frequently Spoken Word on the Planet: O.K.

And don't miss the Top Bushisms of 2005.

LSSU - Banished (overused) Words for 2006: Surreal - Hunker down - Person of interest - Community of learners - Up or down vote - Breaking news - Designer breed - FEMA - First-time caller - Pass the savings on to you! - 97% fat free - An accident that didn't have to happen - Junk science - Git-er-done - Dawg - Talking points - Holiday tree.