And the Medical

Going back tomorrow to play with the medical people again.  If I'm good I'll get that elephant stamp on my paper because I spelled every word correctly.

This is a mixed situation as a lot of research went into it before delivering, "You've got cancer, dear."

When I get to the show, "You're screwed if I cut you and you're screwed if I don't.  I ain't cutting you. Come back in September."

So now it's September.  Yahoo.

For a quarter, I wouldn't show.  That situation fucked me right up.  I'm croaked ... I'm not croaked ... Let's wait and see.

What I see is they have no fucking idea except my chest is fucked-up.  Thanks but I knew that already.  If you don't get it on the chest, listen to me trying to sing "Too Much or Not Enough" as it's obvious there is no air to push it.  I'm not feeling sorry for myself but rather I'm annoyed that I managed to make a bad instrument sound even worse.

So I will go to the appointment as having doctors pissed off with me for not showing wouldn't be half the angry I'd be hearing from Cat and fairly.  There ain't no choice to it, I go.

Greed is Not Simply Taking the Whole Cake for Yourself

If you take the whole cake, you just get fat.  Be greedy like that if you wish but it's not that interesting.

The greed I mean is to waste forty billion dollars and a tremendous amount of the world's resources to build the F-22 jet fighter.  One hundred and eighty-seven of these fighters were built.  Zero ever saw any real service.  A few escorted some turboprop Russian bombers a few times.  Hoo-rah.

It was called the "Raptor" but "RapedYou" would be more appropriate.

To see this and do nothing is vastly more wasteful and greedy than stuffing your face with chocolate.  This isn't about saving for retirement or making sure your kids have shoes.  My point is that any difficulty in getting those shoes almost certainly comes from the wastefulness you see above plus many other examples.

Right now the U.S. is occupying countries all over the world and has placed military bases there ... so they can ensure Russians do not occupy them and put military bases there.  That the Russians have never given any indication of doing anything beyond ensuring no-one else ever does to them what Hitler did, the basis for this provocation makes neither military nor budgetary sense.

The Pentagon still wants a war with Stalin.  It's not that the rest of the world failed to evolve but rather the US didn't.  Perhaps you noticed they are not Communists anymore.  Everywhere is socialist and it's only a question of degree.

The only ideological concept in play around the world is doing good business ... and it is fucking lousy at it.  Any business this wasteful deserves to go straight down the Crapper.  Thank you, Thomas.  Long may your name be remembered.  People laugh but let's see how funny they find it in an outhouse, eh, Thomas.

"Abandoning Paradise" - the Web Version

Putting "Abandoning Paradise" up as a Web version will definitely work and it will be cooler than I thought.

Because.

It will have the most killin' slide show.  The book gives the slide show intelligence as it will show related pics and then click back to where you were reading.  That wasn't my plan as I intended only to put the pics in at the appropriate places but now it links into the slide show and that's impressive when you're playing with it.

There are 350 MB of images from the book.

But

The site host gave me unlimited disk space.

That might not have been such a good idea as I will definitely use it.  What this means is the pics I couldn't show previously will now be possible.

The book is linked to the Features page and you're welcome to watch the progress but do understand the construction.  I will fiddle with the first chapter for some while to be sure I have the layout as I like.  Then it will extend to all the other chapters fairly quickly.

I hope you all are worth this much work.  You are, yes??  (lacht)

The Great Southern Megalopolis via Mother Nature News

There was an article from Mother Nature News which apparently is now a subsidiary of Fox News as they talked so glowingly over the potential for a megalopolis stretching from Raleigh, NC, to Atlanta, GA.  They write with a virtual sneer regarding thoughts of lifestyles based on walking, etc.  (MNN:  What if Raleigh and Atlanta just merged?)

If Mother Nature had anything to do with this network, it was most likely only until she had completed her latest bowel movement.

These whizbang shavetails think all they need to write is a bag of reefer and WordPress.  However, if you have no more brain than a potato, you were destined to be a politician or a Hollywood director.  Know thyself, thy dimwitted fuck.

Perhaps this is what happens when you watch "Bladerunner" one too many times and think it's cool to have vast city wastelands where everything seems constantly to be wet and dripping with something. (The Rutger Hauer croakage scene was genius and, I believe I read somewhere, there was at least some measure of improvisation to it.)

That such a megalopolis grows around Atlanta implies there would likely be also the NYB (New York / Boston) megalopolis and, gasp, the San Franangeles megalopolis when those two roll together so they can slide into the sea as one.

That it would take a second sun to power all this doesn't occur to these crapshoot journalists because of two fundamental problems:  they don't think and they can't write.

Coming from Mother Nature Network, joyfully heralding the advent of an era of ultimate consumption isn't just bad journalism, it's an offense against nature.

And not one of them gets it that the humans in "The Mote in God's Eye" (Larry Niven / Jerry Pournelle) were the Moties and not the ones who looked humanoid.  (Wiki:  The Mote in God's Eye - You may find it amusing that Brian Aldiss apparently didn't understand it either)

America Didn't Win World War II

You hear constantly that American won World War II ... but only from Americans.  Anyone with any sensitivity, common sense, and/or knowledge of history is aware of the millions of Russian civilians and soldiers who were lost fighting on the Eastern Front.  They lost so many soldiers fighting the German armies that it put a significant dent in the population demographic for all of Russia.

My purpose isn't to denigrate what America did but rather to view it accurately.  Consider what would have happened had Hitler not attacked Stalin in one of the most blindly stupid military campaigns of all world history.

Do you seriously think England would have been able to stand up to being the sole focus of the German military.  Without the beachhead in England, there would have been no chance of the D-Day invasion.  Hitler would have had plenty of time to build his V3 rocket to chuck them across the Atlantic.  He would have had plenty of time to finish his work on a nuclear bomb.

Maybe he could pacify Stalin by sending him lots of vodka and telling him he loves him.  After Amerika is toast, we will be best friends for, well, until we're not best friends.  Drunk up, comrade.

The idea America won the war insults every soldier who fought in it including the Americans because every damn one of them knew he was risking his life to stop Hitler.  That Japan took so long was because of all those damn little islands.  The Japanese Navy as an offensive threat was mostly destroyed at Midway, long before.

If not for the Eastern Front, America would have had the same situation as Germany in which they have two wars at the same time.  They had that anyway but not to the extent it would have been if Russia were not engaged.

I suspect America would be radioactive right now if not for Russia.

lefty Unplugged Closes the Factories at Cat's Art MusikCircus

"I Hope They Shut the Factory Down" is a song by lefty Unplugged / Kevin Farrell in the grand style of protest that made music what it was.  That it isn't anymore is because people stopped doing it.  That lefty stands up at Cat's Art MusikCircus to do it now gets my respect.

The Moral Majority turned to cellulite and went to Facebook where they protest all day and eat Taco Bell carry-out.  However, the Moral Majority has always been cellulite, they weren't previously so annoying but they would be anyway.

The protest is what the Moral Majority won't hear and that's why it takes balls to do it.  The Moral Majority has lots of money but they blow it on guns, booze and Taco Bell.  They could save any musician on the planet if the passed on a few tacos but they won't.  Tacos make them feel safe.  Protest scares them.  Maybe they think it will take away their tacos.  I don't know.

I respect very much that lefty hopes the factories will shut down as I agree that what the factory workers get is not worth what the factory owners do.  It's not clear why they turn into greedy, arrogant bastards just because they built a warehouse or some such but so it goes.  We have all seen it happen.

Don't turn this upside-down to read lefty's other songs are without protest as that's not true.  They are worded with more subtlety.  Therefore I conclude lefty wanted this one In Your Face.

Hat tip from the Galactic Peace Tour to lefty Unplugged for having the balls to take a stand and, what's more, it's a cool song.  Ask him for it.  Sending tips to musicians is always good but I positively ga-ron-tee you will make a smile if you ask for a song by name.

Um, what?  You know my stuff?

The Scooter Ride from Greece to Scotland Happens Again

"Abandoning Paradise" is the book telling the story of last summer's 3,000 km scoot from Greece to Scotland.  Nothing will change with that book as it spins happily around on iTunes and gets hammered with all the hippies at Apple.

The story of the ride was covered in the blog so it was released piece by piece.  That's the same way the book will now be released in Web format and it has started on the Features page where you can pick up the link and all the other stuff or you can go directly to the new "Abandoning Paradise" site.  The Foreword segment is online and the rest of the book will follow just as it did on the blog, although considerably faster.

The content is word-for-word identical as will be the pictures.  Quite likely there will be more of them as there are tons you didn't see the first time, for many reasons.  (Don't hold me on it being a verbatim copy as I may add to it.)

So, with the Foreword written, the next thing in Chapter One is to take a last look at Paradise before rolling out.  The biggest regrets are most of all that I couldn't hang on long enough for Lotho and family, Yevette, the Cadillac Man could get out there to visit.  I knew I was falling apart.  I had to do it.  I'm sorry but hopefully you all got that from what happened when I got back here.  I'm not sorry about a whole lot in my life but it sucked that I couldn't share it better with you.

The book is the next best thing and this will leave it splattered all over the place.  It's still on the blog and people do still read some of that stuff.  The book is out there on iTunes.  Now there will be this version on the blog.  They do not conflict with each other but it would bore you to review why that is true.

So, I'm happy to share it and I hope you enjoy it as much as the first time around.

On Being a Right-Column Celebrity and Boobies ... but I Repeat Myself

The Right Column has nothing to do with politics but rather it's something that appears on tabloid news rags such as the Mirror the Mail and presumably other sleazoid offerings like People, etc.

Right now, the Right Column is full of boobies.  It always is but just now it's boobie boobies rather than boobies from brain death.  One hundred incredibly-famous celebrities whose names you have likely never heard are incensed, outraged, and humiliated over the release over boobie pictures hacked from their cellphones.

Jennifer Lawrence is crying like someone just hung her off a cross.  This seems to reduce to a Nipple Fixation as I read the world has seen every other millimeter of her boobies elsewhere but there must be some type of Nipple Proscription in her world.  Oh, no, no, no, you can't touch this.  Are the nipples the Money Shot?  We just don't know.

I gather Jennifer Lawrence has been in a couple of movies but she doesn't look all that impressive, kind of an average-looking Hollywood blondie from what I'm seeing.  In fact, I didn't recognize any of the faces of the 'celebrities' who were offended.  Maybe I would have recognized their boobies but I haven't seen them.

The Right Column is also where you can discover where Justin Bieber was most recently-arrested.  There will be a picture of Kim Kardashian doing nothing.  Those are the only names I know but they fill these columns every day.

So.

A lot of people must read them ... or at least look at the pictures hoping for boobies.


However, here at the Ministry of the Internet, we have a few little problems with the Boobie Boggle as bobbling boobies are good but boggling boobies are not so good.

- How did Junior Hackdog manage to hack a hundred different cellphones for all these almost celebrities.  Is he a one-punk News of the World replacement.  Does he aspire to be the new Rupert Murdoch.

- Do all almost celebrities have boobie pictures on their cellphones.  If so then obviously they share them so what's the problem.

- Can you look through the Right Column without thinking at least once, "Who the fuck are these assholes?"


I really only have one question:  how much did Kim Kardashian charge for the family package of releasing porno images and pretending they were leaked.  I've sometimes wondered just what she does other than taking video while she has sex and now, possibly, we are starting to learn.

"Amerika - ein Knast" (Gedicht) - Auf Deutsch und auch Englisch

Ich möchte nach Deutschland gehen
Amerika ist ein Knast
Amerikaner sind behandelt
Wie Amerikaner das Welt behandelt.

Was sie sehen sie werden essen
und dann werde sie mehr zu haben
Sie bekommen wirklich fett
wie Katzen auf dem Bauernhof

Sie werden nie arbeiten
and werde immer nur zu essen
Sie haben keine Geld
aber sie hat ein Kadillak.

Ich möchte das größte Auto
Ich möchte das größte Haus
Ich möchte schönsten Kinder
aber sie gelernt was ich weiss.

Gier gibt kein Schönheit
Hass ist niemals frei
Meine Kinder werden glücklich sein
Mein Kinder sind genau wie mich


I want to go to Germany
America is a jailhouse
Americans are treated
the way Americans treat the world

What they see they will eat
and then they will have more
They become really fat
like cats on a farm.

They will never work
they will only always eat
They have no money,
but they have a Cadillac.

I want the biggest car
I want the biggest house
I want the most beautiful children
but they learn what I know

Greed gives no beauty
Hatred is never free
My children will be happy
My children are just like me.

The Intelligent Design of the Monarch Butterfly

The Monarch butterfly takes an extraordinarily long migration path and it requires five generations of butterflies to accomplish it  This means five generations for the complete point-to-point turnaround, starting in Mexico and the fifth generation returning.  So how did the fifth generation know how to find its way back.  Learn more of their migration at Monarch Butterfly Fund: The Monarch Butterfly's Annual Cycle.

It dawned on me the long path is because of the retreat of the last Ice Age.  That was roughly fifty thousand years ago.  That they knew to do that had to have come from surviving previous Ice Ages.

They must have in their little butterfly minds to fly North so long as the weather is getting warmer or turn South if it ain't.  Apart from that and thoughts of finding nectar and hot sex with a lady butterfly, there probably isn't room for too much else in a butterfly brain.

That simple logic gives them the flexibility to survive any Ice Age so long as a at least a few make it.  At the extreme of an Ice Age, they probably would not migrate far at all, it wouldn't be possible and it wouldn't get so hot they would need to leave where they are.  As the ice recedes, they follow it and the milkweed and they start sooner because Spring comes earlier.  They don't follow it because Butterfly Einstein says it's time but rather they don't like increasing heat.

The earliest Ice Ages must have given them the tolerance for the heat at the southern extreme of their migration.  Those that couldn't survive it died out with the most heat-tolerant Monarchs living on in Mexico.  They don't like it too hot so they move when the temperature goes up.  That part is all straight-up and makes sense.

But then it gets weird.

The last generation of butterflies to fly back South goes through major physiological changes as the emerging butterfly is not capable of sex so it's useless for anything but migration.

So, Dagwood, this is where yer evolution gets all chicken and the egg-like.  Why should a Monarch butterfly happily living in Mexico evolve complex biological changes such that it can fly long distances.  It's a happy butterfly, it's already home.  It makes no sense such a mechanism should evolve as there's no pressure to drive it.

Which means they must have already known how to do it or how would little butterfly brain figure it out.  The butterflies in the North must have lived in an interglacial period and came up with the change to delay the onset of sexual maturity, etc that permitted migration.  The other Monarchs would have no reason, there's no force driving them.

That seems reasonable to generally explain the basis for evolution of the ability to do the migration.

It doesn't go anywhere near figuring out how they find their way to Mexico.  If their only instinct is to fly South then most of them will end up in the Gulf of Mexico learning to swim.

So ...

How about that is exactly how it worked and most of the returning butterflies didn't make it as swimmers ... but ... the ones that did wound up in Mexico.  Those are the ones to turn around and migrate back around again and those ones know where they start.  Since they are the only ones left, that process is repeated every season until somehow a map gets stuck into the DNA as how else will Monarch Generation 5 know the way back to somewhere it has never been.

The only other way they could know is if they are told in Butterfly Language or they use telepathy.  Good science shouldn't rule out anything but that's complete crap (maybe).

That general mechanism should work for how they figured out how to do it so, once they knew, where they did they store it.  I imagine there's a Nobel Prize for whomever figures out how that works.  So, um, go forth and be a genius there, Dagwood.  Someone will.  Maybe someone already did.

My Duck Soup Gets Greek Features

Charlie and the Greek Kittens is the latest addition to the Features page on My Duck Soup.  It's part slide show to give the story of them growing and it's part commentary for that part of the time in Katakolon.  It pulls a lot of cute but I can withstand the insulin as there's also a bit on talking to Harry Loutas to learn of his BioLive Paradise (English / French) near Katakolon.


There's kind of a Heinleinian old fool drive to Tie Every Damn Thing Together but I am aware I'm doing it.  I'm sure the story of Charlie is a good one and there are many in the ride through all those countries up to Scotland.  The trick is to present this stuff so it's as engaging, hopefully more so, than the bloggery during the ride.  What I consider is doing "Abandoning Paradise" on My Duck Soup so it's easy to use / read.  It wouldn't affect anyone buying the book as, wtf, they don't buy it anyway.

(Ed:  as in goose egg?)

That's a Bruder, mein Roger.

Same with "Lunagrams" but that one is associated with Silas Scarborough so maybe it shoots nickels at comets instead of my cheerful self.  It's probably connected correctly as both books are associated with the same AppleID so I don't have any particular concern ... other than writing rubbishy books.

(Ed:  not even sympathy sales?)

It doesn't get more pitiful than this.  I'd write an essay on this tragedy ... but no-one would fookin' buy it.

But no-one has to buy anything on My Duck Soup so that's the focus as it's a good story and it'd be a shame if it just spun around on a disk like it's somebody when really it's just a do-nothing politician.

(Ed:  do they call that a segue in the Clever and Creative Writers School?)

The evidence seems clear to me I have never attended a Clever and Creative Writers School nor is there any chance they would admit such baggage in any case.

(Ed:  do you think antagonizing people politically hurts your sales?)

I fuckin' hope so!  That means they listened.

"I Love my Fear" (poem)

I love my deadly fear,
I feed it all I can.
It defines my inner person,
it makes me who I am.

I want to feel the terror
even with no need
as my life's so fucking boring
there's nothing else to eat.

I sometimes go to movies
but they're just like network news,
just a pre-paid load of crap
from coked-out Cali tools.

People will dislike me
as they want to keep their fears
Never listen to the truth,
It's not what they can hear.

My terror is my passion
Every move elicits fear
the zombies may be marching
I know they're coming near.

Microbes will attack me,
the ice is going to melt,
Florida goes down under
but they already live in Hell.

There is cancer in the sunshine,
there's poison in the food,
your children will be monsters
and aren't you such a rube

as every word is bullshit
they love to play your fears
But there's no snake in your toilet
and ISIS won't come here.