Saturday, August 21, 2010

Oh, Gawd.
Blackwater USA turned Blackwater Worldwide (and now Xe Services) gets fishier and still more fishy scented. This will inevitably end in tears. If it ends. Well- tears without end…

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Writing

It’s said that Hunter S. Thompson banged out F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby on his typewriter over and over again just to get a feeling for his writing, to get a flow to the music of his prose. Many writers worth a damn write every day, just for the pure joy of the exercise and to feel the colors of the mind finding their way onto the page.

I think it has something to do with passion. The desire to do something over all things because that action or activity shouts in one’s ear until it gets done, will of the will itself; joy of being that gets something done.
What happens when that fire goes untended, when another act muscles its way into a flow? Work for money and survival, even in a cushy, overfed land like America, has a way of insinuating itself into the warp and weft of consciousness. And by damn, it’s a lot like yanking a length of barbed wire from the trunk of a tree grown to close to the fence; sometimes it’s not worth the effort of wrestling the wire, it’s just fine to cut both ends.

Thompson was a great writer for quite a while, a man who slung himself into the machine with both barrels ablaze. That practice paid off, even if it was for a purpose other than what he intended. While he clacked away at that keyboard with the words of ‘Gatsby’ channeling through him; in his soul,Thompson found a purpose, a passion, a joy and finally, a vocation: to write the underbelly of society. To cast light on the edge and bring its bright, unseemly vision back from to the dead.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Renewal... but first, much aggravation


Compy died. Just up and corrupted its own boot sector, as far as I can tell, a couple of days ago. I spent much of yesterday trying to reset the bootysector on the phone with the Philippines and India. HP support was good this time; I liked them much more than Dell during the last hard drive crisis/freak-session.
Anyhow, now onward to renewed productivity and catchup; I’ll be back with some more fibrillated human data soon enough!

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

the sky, once more


Two people stopped by the little house on the high desert today.
They’re both in their mid fifties, their hair is thinning, gray or graying, and they are both amazing beings concerned about the world, the people thereon and their families.
Both are physically fit and active beyond the ‘norm’ for their years, working hard and playing hard.
Really, the biggest difference between the two is that one is ‘disabled’, having lived with the effects of cerebral palsy for his entire life and the other doesn’t have that particular problem. They both do amazing things with their lives and are admired for who they are by many.
I love them both and am grateful for their brotherhood.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

the sky


I wonder about the power of intention, or at least my ability to harness the power of the hopeful mind. We all exist inside a strict set of perceptions governed by desires and what we see as possible.

Wide variation is difficult and the natural world swirls on its way without regard to our fears, simply giving way to even the most egregious interference by our species.

I have hope, still.

Monday, June 14, 2010

The Tea Party


They see roads as a birthright,
Professing His and His father’s name
while angry with Christ for setting a way of charity and deference.
They would with a Cesarean wave grant rights as benefit to their world view
or negate any that on their party cast shadow or any scent unseemly.
With ideas Jacobin and still others staunchly against that grain,
when they rant, I’m not sure where flowers begin and pavement ends with a vertical drop.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Old Windows


Right next to this desk there is a window. When I work during the day, I get out the old ThinkPad (Lenovo, just a few months after the IBM sellout), open the curtain about a foot and a half, and get down to the tasks at hand.There’s the yard’s north gate, the old concrete pathway, a couple of Dogwood bushes, the street and my neighbor’s poplar right within view.

It’s been raining off and on for a few days now, and the grass is high with dark, rain-laden clouds over the mountains to the east. We live here in Spring City year-round at this point in our lives. Our kids are pretty young, and without family or many like minds nearby, life can feel shabby and desperate at times.We are very happy together as a nuclear family, so don’t get me wrong; but with three teens in the house and more climbing their way up the old ladder, plus a couple of formerly artsy and idealist parents pining away in a hamster wheel of providing, teaching, cooking, and maintenance, there are personalities seeking a more excellent way ’round this wee house on the high desert.

Sometimes parting a curtain will give an old vista fresh flavor by virtue of a new frame. Gratitude for the window, light and fresh air is a part of the dance, too, and maybe someday, all of this exercise for the sake of keeping a lid on the frustration will enable bursting, new growth and a realization of why hope was worthwhile.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

I'm not so sure that things will work out with Bloggenpucky's continuation in situ, so here's a link that I'll make sure does the trick for those of you who want to keep following this loopy saga:
http://www.conjunct.org

One of these quick days I'll have something figured out, whether it's via a new URL or this customary Bloggenpucky address. One way or the other, this site will remain at least an archive for everything from 1 May 2010 back to the good old days of 2001.
Thanks, y'all!

Monday, April 19, 2010


I've been screwing around with this blog for about nine years now. It's been a great outlet from time to time; this movable feast has served as screed, journal and family bulletin board for almost a quarter of my life.
I haven't written much for a long while, partially because of personal issues and cursed laziness, but also for the past month or so because I've been thinking about how to save the blog. Blogger is changing services and eliminating key elements for those who use separate servers for content. I'm one of those people, and have been for about seven of those nine years.
To tell the truth, I can't really figure out how to get Blogger to behave in such a way as to preserve the format and content of my blog and then migrate it to some other mechanism to keep things going with continuity and the same addressing and archives. I haven't the time or, really, the gol durn energy to wade through all of the technical crap involved.
So what will I do in the next eleven days to fix the problem?
I don't know. As with so many aspects of my life these days, I might just ignore it and let it slip into the obscurity it probably deeply deserves. I have complete backups of the writings and thumbnails up until last summer, and I might be able to cobble something together to preserve the remaining bit for the family in some form.
I'm still not happy, though. I've put a tremendous amount of energy into this weblog, both in photos and in verbiage, over the years. I've provided a bit of information and quite a few photos for the web and Google results pages for the better part of a decade. Now, unless I happen upon a miracle or a bunch of time off to the side of the road, my seven hundred some odd entries will become broken links and then disappear from the intarwebs.
It might be for the best of all that this odd little sand painting becomes dust in the wind before I had planned. It doesn't matter much when cast against the walls of ruined temples. Nevertheless, It is my current public contribution. I'll try to do something about it, but if nothing else, these last few posts before Mayday might become the muffled squeaking swansong of Bloggenpucky...

Friday, April 9, 2010

Please, let someone look at this and have some sort of 'aha' moment. Not a life-changing or God forbid, a philosophical conundrum, but at least a moment of clear hesitation and self-reflection...
Tea Party Jesus
Nothing's perfect; nor is this site in its wide-ranging satire of 'Tea Party' brand conservatism. It is a bit sickeningly funny, to me, though.
(Warning: Some offensive Christian-spoken language.)

Friday, March 19, 2010


Some of the kids out this evening as the sun set; north wind at about five to ten miles an hour, temperature about 45 degs. Man, but they were having fun.
I told them they'd better split some wood because winter hasn't relinquished the nights here yet.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Another stormy Central Utah weekend. Did some going over of student's papers, ran to the post and back, and today I'm milling about and puttering over this and that. The visual stim is getting old and gray, kinda like the winter's influence over my brain and perception. I know things are fine, but I'm just a little worn out with making old things new.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

The 'lympics didn't always bother me like they do now. I loved to watch them and hear the stories of athletes who passionately sacrificed in often very humble circumstances in order to compete in the games "just for the sake of the Olympic experience." Of course, many were going for the 'gold', but more often the spotlight was on the overall human experience.
These days, I see more fashion and Hollywood-style glamor than a bunch of young people getting along and competing for the joy of it all. More often than not, I see rich people exercising entitlement in order to get what they want. It's always been a political forum where certain people vie for superiority and more power on the world stage, but it seems that the games are almost completely taken over by the elites.
That's more than just no fun, but fairly distasteful when compared to the original and still professed ethos of the games. It's doesn't have much to do with amateurs doing their damnedest to be the best they can be, but almost entirely about how to become rich and famous.
Big surprise, I know.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Creative acts don't always have to be spontaneous.
I read a book once called 'Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing'. One of the points I remember most poignantly was the importance of pushing through stasis to a flow of creativity. I'm not much of an artist if compared to people with spontaneous and passionate talent, I reckon, but that doesn't matter if I am true to a spirit of self-actualization. I do enjoy the process of creation, drawing, sculpting, painting, making or whatever else I can get myself to do, but I also love the realization that I've been able to lift myself from stagnancy to a semblance of hope that I can commune with the world at large and perhaps even another person through my works.
My work is very draining. I spend from ten to twelve hours a day pushing myself to help people who don't want to be helped and students who want make someone else more miserable than they feel, so the dynamics of hope and energy for making can be daunting. It works itself out spontaneously sometimes, but most of the time, it's like I described. I have to push it until I feel like I want to do it. It's not easy; like I said, I don't feel like I'm a natural at this point in my life.
Each day is a fight to remain authentic, to be connected to what I feel is the fount of humanity. I think most people have lost knowledge of that connection, let alone the connection because of the ubiquity of struggle for money and comfort. I think it's important for some to go against the grain on this one, no matter how much crap we get from society-at-large.

Sunday, February 14, 2010


Certainly don't choose the winner in politics very often; don't really much root for anything but the underdog for manifold reasons, but the single 'lympic hopeful I had this year made gold! Good on 'er.
Man, but she's good on the bumps. I couldn't ever get those down.
Well, that does it. Enough celebrity-watching for me.

Sunday, January 17, 2010



First desert scurry of the winter, believe it or not. Not many words fer to share right now, deeply glad to be alive and heading through, though.