Very much a quiet day here ... waiting for more rain ... eating mushroom pizza again... and watching The Shining ... a movie I have never seen. Playing with images from last week ... like the one above taken with the A80 at Pardon Grey Trust which is a variant on an earlier digital toy shot of the same place. Painting ... haven't done much painting recently but Mina and I were talking about it last night while we were hanging out sipping more of that Sutter Home White Zinfandel in mini-bottles in the parking lot of Logan Express waiting to pick up April who had just spent a week in Ireland ... so I decided to pull out the brushes and oils to see what would happen ... zinnias ... that's what happened ... interesting ... might be something here I can work with. Now I'm seriously thinking about a trip to Clements for soap and scented candles because suddenly I remember one really good reason why I haven't been painting .... it's call Turpenoid and don't believe the folks at Dick Blick when they say it "has the same properties as mineral spirits without the characteristically strong odor".

The Bozox bite back big, taking two of three in the most recent Yankee series and pulling to 7 ½ games, as they continue to execute Vince McMahon’s script, now that he’s on the payroll just as I suggested, in a nearly perfect tease that’s clearly building up to some sort of tragic September denouement in the Bronx. By the way .... was it Dave, Gabe or Trot who was out there scratching people? Scratching? What's that all about? Even Tonya Harding doesn't scratch. Of course she doesn't win too many fights either. No matter ... it was still great fun to see ... Mina said it was almost as much fun as basketball ... at least for a moment or two during the scrum anyway ...and the walk-off home run to cap it all was great theater ... oops, I meant great baseball ... sorry Vince ... I almost gave it away again. And has that really been Kevin Millar out there during this series? Seriously ... and has Kevin been getting any packages recently from Barry? Or Lance? Or Arnold? Forget about that and send a brouhaha pic from game 2 to anyone you think might need it and stay tuned while the Bozox buckle up for a 12-game road trip and the Yankees chill in Toronto before they have to go home to explain all this ... especially the scratches.

Translucent gibbon rucksack bonanza? Freight train over avocado pit self-flagellates? Really? Are these people kidding. I’m as big a fool for Naked Lunch spew as anyone but many of the spam poems which "somehow transcend their mundane purpose and burst into the golden light of literary glory" in this article at The Register seem weak compared to just about any random steroid haiku jewel from my inbox such as:

pigtail climax zambia cycle sainthood menopause
hematite buried cent swain holster credent. debase
absorption allusion marijuana chieftain keg.
homework omaha cyclist maybe divulge help trump bribe

which accompanied the most recent generic "Hey you ,. Peni s Enlarge)ment pills that are fast, easy and safe!" offer. Wonder if there is a way to make use of this? I mean the haiku ... not the pills. Should be. In fact I’m not so sure I didn’t actually write this one:

guidance NET nearly mailing based indicate Sender systems One management guidance doesn't translate Document respect display performing interpretation: source operationally preferences defined languages Alternate these employ by review IT tag time non-proprietary know has found subtle think interpretation: important numbering

as some smoke for a Quarterly Performance Review several years ago. Wonder where the spammers found my old notebooks ... thought I had burned all those.

When John Locke said that "the mark of genius is the ability to discern not this thing or that thing but rather the connection between the two" ... if he actually ever said that and I'm not really sure he did ... he couldn't have thought that combining digital photography with painting should be so designated ... but no matter because, genius or no, tricking up some of my old oils with A80 output is good fun on an overcast Saturday morning.

Hanging Rock, shown in the image above, lurks above Second Beach in the Norman Bird Sanctuary just east of Sachuest Point, still bruised from when, ten to twelve thousand years ago, the Wisconsin Ice Sheet sheared off the southern tip from the largest of conglomerate stone ridges that now lie in the sanctuary. Don't forget you can send this picture to a friend ... do that why don't you .. it would be better than either you or your friends driving down to Second Beach to see Hanging Rock for yourselves ... there's more than enough traffic there already.

Morning ... and I don't have the energy to drive down to Sachuest or even walk down the hill to the beach ... so I'm just going to sit here and look at the flowers on my porch for a while. If you know someone just as lazy maybe you might want to send an email postcard of these flowers to them so they can do the same thing.

Recently deceased playwright Peter Barnes, who’s story of Pope Clement VI, Flagellants, Black Ravens, Floties and the Black Death entitled Red Noses is scheduled for production this fall at the Gamm, apparently once said "It is absurd to sit around sniffing wild flowers when you can invent them."

I’m not so sure you can’t do both. And why stop at just sniffing flowers when you can take fun close-ups with your new digital camera and, at least in the case of chicory, drink them, or at least their roots, as well ... good for inspiration when doing your inventing I suppose ... or so the French think ... Mark Keaton’s recent article in the Baxter Bulletin out of Arkansas neatly sums up the ideas of the French regarding roasted chicory roots as an adulterant for coffee, and pretty much everything else you might need to know about chicory.

And you might want to catch upcoming Red Noses show to learn how death and disaster reveals true self or just follow current news at Google if you can’t wait. But if all this death and disaster is more than you can stand, and you don’t care so much about true self, or already know as much as you need to, maybe you should just stick to Google chicory news where I originally found Mark's write-up.

Deep in her dream Daphne was desperately fighting the smell of a bad memory. She woke suddenly from the struggle when someone kicked her and found that the smell was not a memory at all, but was the very real grim black 10 PM now stench of burning tires sweeping through a twisting decayed maze of industrial corridors outside the small room she lay in. Unsure of where and in what sprawling multi-story nightmare building she was and just as unsure of where the blaze was going, Daphne knew she had to run and while running make all the right decisions to escape the fast-moving flames that danced in multiple directions across the oil soaked floors. In those few minutes before the fire engulfed the entire vacant building Daphne clung desperately to the hope that she would survive and then, when she was suddenly free and knew she would live, she continued running until she tripped and collapsed in the shadows just beyond a row of bystanders standing in the parking lot at the nearby McDonalds.

The building, most recently known as Fairhaven Mills, that had once been the New England Cotton Yarn Company and then the Pemaquid Mill, where huge quantities of automobile tire yarn were once produced, where 300,000 junk tires were once stored, where hazardous substances used for a variety of purposes were found stored and then removed by the Environmental Protection Agency, where "big-box" superstores and a casino developer had at one time expressed an interest was gone quickly. The New Bedford firefighters had long ago drawn up detailed plans for fighting fires in each of the city’s many abandoned mills and they did their job with cool thorough professionalism. Daphne had no plan at all. She had no idea where she was and what she had been doing in the building. She sat watching the fire then turned to look up at a man who was leaning over her. When he asked if she was "aw-ight" she nodded yes and reached for the hand he offered.

Picture this ... I've actually gone and bought the Canon PowerShot A80 ... and my initial reaction is that it is nearly the perfect camera for me and not a bad camera for just about anyone who's looking to be digital ... like I would really know after less than 48 hours ... but after returning the Spanish language manuals the camera came packed with for English ones I was quickly up and taking pictures of just about everything I could ... first stop yesterday was Mina's garden of delight.
 
Also picked up a cheapo charger and set of Ni-Mh batteries with the camera, then on the way home after the manual swap I found a case at a yard sale for 50 cents that was big enough for the camera, a set of backup AA batteries, some Deep Woods Off and a few other odds and ends.  I'm sticking with the 32 MB card that the camera came with for now ... seems to meet my needs so far.  I'm more than happy ... OK, I'm not so happy about viewing the LCD screen in bright sunlight today at Pardon Grey Trust with mosquitoes swarming around but otherwise things with the new camera are fine ... and I'm thinking I can't really blame the mosquitoes on Canon.

Between the weather and the industrial strength jetty work going on at the beach just down the street I’ve had considerable time recently for summer reading. Always fun to discover a good "novel of despair" and Mina’s dark and funny stories from her recent trip to the "Big Easy" somehow pointed me in the direction of The Moviegoer by Walker Percy ... loved it. Have now begun reading Love in the Ruins, also by Percy ... both from interlibrary loans ... great idea ...especially when I can just sit here and order up books through the Cooperating Libraries Automated Network (CLAN).

Other current reading includes The Irish Village Murder by Dicey Deere and, after finding a vintage Four Seasons Foundation printing from 1968, I am revisiting The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster by Richard Brautigan where, speaking of despair, he writes "If I were dead, I couldn’t attract a female fly".

Recently completed Mortal Engines: The Hungry City Chronicles by Philip Reeve ... ok I guess, but Reeve is so not a Philip Pullman, Garth Nix or anyway near a J.K. Rowling. And also two surprisingly enjoyable books, A Hidden Magic and Never Trust a Dead Man by Vivian Vande Velde ... why have I never heard of her? And Ghost Wars by Steve Coll ...you’ve heard of this ... you know ... it's "the Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001" and all ... serious stuff that’s worth a look now and then ... or maybe not.

Next on my list is another Brother Cadfael, The Rose Rent, by Ellis Peters and of course I'm looking for a copy of Stephen Booth’s latest , One Last Breath. Finally I’m thinking Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis ... no, seriously, I am ... don’t remember ever reading this and never saw the movie ... and then Mina tells me she has Da Vinci Code abridged on CD ... and if I can get past Colin Stinton doing women's voices poorly I might enjoy it ... am I the only one who hasn't read this? Is listening the same as reading? No ... many times it's better.

In even their wildest Bolivian peyote dreams, Butch and Sundance never imagined a half-million dollar score but that’s almost how much two senior civilian Navy employees were looking to ride off with if their plan had not been exposed. Rolling in a third unnamed senior employee and the others who went, or were swept, along likely made the payday for all involved more than one million dollars. But this is not really a miniature Enron, and not an Adelphia clone, though here and there some superficially similarities may appear. The principal named perpetrators here really were, in the opinions of nearly everyone who knows them, honest and highly respected good people. It's the sort of situation that makes you scratch your head and ask "Who are those Guys?"

The Government Executive article "Losing Their Religion" provides a short overview of the scheme which apparently involved, at it’s core, the rather liberal use of the Religious Compensatory Time that is available to Federal employees. But there is more to the story. The whistleblower speaks in "Principles of Ethical Conduct...The Ultimate Bait and Switch" which is available in Breakthroughs: The Research Journal of the MIT Security Studies Program Spring 2004, Vol. XIII, No. 1 (6.4M PDF file), a tale of double standards that should surprise no one. Left unstated is information on the trigger that motivated the whistleblower’s action, one always wonder’s what this might be; details of the financial pain of other employees at the lab from leave they lost when the administrative policies that accompanied the modified comp time process were corrected and; most importantly, the immeasurable loss of credibility the lab and it’s employees suffered within the Navy community.

There’s a fascinating movie here somewhere and, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, it should be cautiously prefaced with a black screen reading "Some of that which follows is true".

Mimsy skidded to a halt in front of the porch and looked up the steps to where Evan sat engrossed with Boris Akunin’s Murder on the Leviathan and the return of Erast Fandorin.

"Summer is almost over ... I’m bored."

Evan looked up.

"Did you see the fireworks last weekend? They weren’t really that special. And they had extra money or something so they were supposed to be so good. Well that wasn't true. The ones in Florida were so much better. And it was hotter there. I went on the dueling dragons. Oh yeah ... upside-down. That was the first time I ever did that. Upside-down ... and your feet hang out. Have you ever done that? And the Tower of Terror ... I was screaming. And Spiderman with 3D glasses. We went to see the movie yesterday. Awesome. Have you seen it yet?"

Evan put his book down.

"I don’t like reading. Do you? You must. Did you get that book at the library? I have to go soon to get my summer reading books. We didn’t go to EPCOT. Know what that stands for? Every Person Comes Out Tired. It’s true. We went to the beach in Florida. It was 2 hours in the car, and 2 hours back and I was sandy and sweating. I got a wicked wedgie and there was a knot on the back of my suit rubbing my back but the pool at the hotel was gross and buggy. Is Mina your girlfriend? When is she coming over again?"

Evan smiled, nodded and shrugged.

"Did you see the police? They were here with some lady. They went into Daphne's apartment. Wouldn’t it be neat if it rained right now? I’m glad softball is over. There's some guy there that likes my mother but she won’t date any man who has boobs bigger than hers. I was so good in softball. We won and I got two of the game balls. Why does my nose run in the summer? I’m allergic to grass ... and stinky ricotti cheese. Eeeuh ... look at this. It’s rat poop ... right here on the step ... I know it is. Look. I don’t want to see this. Bye."

Evan picked up his book. He had read somewhere that dogs didn’t get bored ... why would they?

With MacDonald’s opening now at 0600, and even though I can't speak Spanish even after picking up Living Language Spanish for Beginners or Those Who Want a Thorough Review on CD and listening up to Lesson 13 Demonstrative Pronouns and Adjectives, I can grab an Egg MacMuffin and get out to Sachuest Point early. But not so early today that there weren’t seven or eight people set up with easels and oils frantically painting Second Beach in what I suppose they thought was some sort of magic morning light. I wonder if they’ve notice that just about any light is magic when you’re working with turpenoid ... seems that way to me anyway.

Two bold deer .... they are more common than rats at Sachuest ... though I did see a rat today ... or what I thought was a rat ... still not going to buy the Kaufman North American Mammal Guide even though the copy at Borders was very helpful to me in identifying the mink last week ... yes, the weasel was a mink. Didn’t need the Bird Guide to know that the defiant feather ball on the side of the stone dust trail about half way around the riverside loop today was a baby Robin ... but I did need the Guide to determine that the small masked bird I spotted later was a Common Yellowthroat ... sounds trashy, no? And I know Daisy Fleabane when I see it ... hmmmm ... another trashy name. I’m thinking now I do need to get a wildflower or wild grasses Guide because I’m wondering what that lavender-headed grass I’m seeing is ... or maybe that was just turpenoid flashback. And that buzzing? And the choke vine that is suddenly draped and curled everywhere ... turpenoid again? Es muy bueno. Si.

Bloglines has rolled out a smooth new User Interface, a blogging tool called Clip Blogs, and more to celebrate its first birthday. Not sure I care about Clip Blogs but new design is excellent. You've heard of RSS feeds, yes? Of course you have. You're not using some lame aggregator are you? Or the My Yahoo Beta? I can't be the only one who's added this to their My Yahoo can I? Well, I'm hoping Yahoo gets themselves squared away soon but they have a long way to go to equal or surpass Bloglines. Try it. No, really. Try it ... Bloglines. Now. Go ahead ... it won't hurt.

Mina tells me Kerry is going to pick Edwards some time very soon. She's been pondering this over the holiday weekend and she has the kind of connections where she might know this sort of thing ... I don't ... but based on the card spreads below I'd say its going to be Gephardt.

I'm thinking this looks bleak for Edwards:



While this looks promising for Gephardt:



Maybe you want to do a tarot reading for yourself? Maybe not? Or maybe you want to run this for Bob Graham and Tom Vilsack?

Four plus hours of aural Sox from two directions for last night’s game had been great but had left Evan exhausted. Listening to Red Sox play-by-play man Joe Castiglione and color commentator Jerry Trupiano on WPRO AM simultaneously with John "Yankees win! The-eh-eh-eh-eh Yankees win!" Sterling and Charley Steiner for the Yankees on The Score FM was a nearly perfect way to follow the action and, Evan was determined that with this new approach he could continue to ignore baseball on TV until he, as a viewer, was given control of camera selection ... maybe not a choice of just any camera ... but at least the opportunity to pick and zoom from 3 or 4 including, most importantly, a wide angle to see the overall positioning of the fielders. With the numbers of channels available on cable or via satellite, how long could it be before this happened? And wasn’t something like viewer camera selection just the next logical step for the "Show" which, by the way, was even more of a "Show" now that Theo Epstein had obviously put Vince McMahon on the payroll along with Bill James? Where else were the story lines for the Sox games coming from? And didn’t Vince need something new to explore to keep him going because, as Evan had been told from a good source, the WWE, where Vince's work was completely stale, clearly isn’t doing it for him anymore?

Yankees 5 and Red Sox 4 after 13... tonight’s stunning smackdown completes a 3 game sweep by the P-stripes at the Stadium. Surprised? Why would you be? How would anyone other than the deeply depressed ever choose to be a BoZox fan? It doesn't get any more darkly comic than what these hapless Pagliaccis can do to lose ... over and over and over.