Thunder rolls beneath Heaven, as is its nature and place:
Sage rulers aligned themselves with the changing seasons, nurturing and guiding their subjects to do the same.
Exceptional Progress if you are mindful to keep out of the way of the natural Flow.
It would be a fatal error to try to alter its course.
This is a time of Being, not Doing.
SITUATION ANALYSIS:
This is thoroughly a matter of the heart.
If everything you attempt, no matter how carefully planned, ends in disarray, then examine your motives.
They are the cause of your predicament.
It isn’t that your motives aren’t pure — even the best intentions will fail under these circumstances.
What stymies you in this situation is that you have a motive at all.
Free yourself of all expectations, release any tenuous grip you may have, and roll with it.
This is totally out of your control.
There are higher powers and more elements affecting the outcome of this situation than you can imagine.
Get out of their way.
behold, i have discovered Cramulus. excellent stuff for wheatpasting, bavarian firedrills, reality hacking, and static antibanality guerilla actions. 100% FREE.
now THIS IS A MOULED. all four Maazin sisters! amazing. look at them go.
i’m just doing a little research before i start cutting on my “no, this is really the desert” desert ghawazee. and this giant wacky beach blanket bash party of a mouled is keeping me bouncing.
i’m pretty proud of myself for buying nothing totally impractical. the suitcase i’m going to use for storage; the coat i’m obviously going to wear between temps of 40 and -20 degrees.
then there’s …. well, i don’t even know. it might be an art piece, or it might be really useful if i, y’know, decide to break out and have a full-on sit-down korean bbq dinner, or something.
whatever, when it’s this pretty i stop caring.
this is a 1950′s korean dining table. it has wooden foldout feet. it’s about 5 feet tall and about 3.5 feet wide. when it’s set upright with the feet unfolded, it’s about 18″ off the floor.
it’s laminated. or it has a transparent layer imposed on it. i’ve never seen one like this, really, so i’m not sure what the construction is, other than dark wood.
oh, and the white bits aren’t paint. or overlay. or carving.
they’re inlaid mother of pearl.
every little swot and scrap is inlaid mother-of-pearl. it’s hard to capture on camera, because to see it you have to look diagonal to the glare a flash causes, due to the lacquer layer.
i have never seen anything like it. of course, it’s not like it’s a ming dynasty vase or a hibachi from the 16th century (i quote that because my mother actually *had* a hibachi from the 16th century, and it was so lovely i was nervous just being three feet from it) – it’s a beautiful little midcentury thing, is all. and it’s going in my dining room.
$120. not bad, imo, though i don’t know for sure (furniture is less my area than clothing).
some people probably think it’s a bit strange that i tend to blog about things i buy. but i love a bargain, and i like chronicling the Tao of Bargain Wa, and i’m a showoff, and i don’t feel like i need any other excuse.
you’d be surprised how often i buy coats in summer. almost all the really good coats i’ve ever bought have been found in July or August. i’m always on the lookout, because (a) i’m really hard to fit: most extremely petite women aren’t as curvy as i am; (b) i have extremely discerning tastes, and (c) good coats, up here, are worth their weight in gold, if you’re out and about in the winter as much as we are – scooterists here will ride year ’round as long as the roads allow for it, and they usually do, no matter how cold it is; we just throw on six layers and go.
when i find one, therefore, if it’s worth it, i grab it and growl. it’s a challenge for me to find them, anyway: i’m still not as used to thinking about needing a new coat for winter as most people who grew up somewhere that they, well, *get* a winter.
enter something you don’t ever expect to find in a semitropical place like the Katrina Zone:
i don’t buy new furs. ever. i don’t contribute to the fur trade, at least not unless it’s something i kill myself. however, if it’s something that died before i was born, i’ll think about it.
especially if it’s entirely composed of champagne mink.
this may look odd if you’ve never seen mink bellies. technically, this color is called “palomino”: it’s about three shades darker than my hair. the collar is champagne fox and is much closer to my hair color.
it’s meant to be below-knee length. on me, it’s more below-calf length.
the nearest we can figure, it was made for a woman almost exactly my size, sometime in the early 60′s – it’s not a swing coat, but it’s trending that way; the lines feel like a transitional style – and we’ve no idea who made it at all. there’s no label, but the fastenings are more or less professional quality, and they’re perfectly intact and sturdy.
i love these interior details. much of the lining is hand-whipstitched: i’ve no idea what to make of that.
this was $65.
part of the deal was a promise that, once we get a good solid couple feet of snow here, i’d get as glamorous as possible – which, if you haven’t met me or have never seen this, is terrifyingly glamorous – put my coat on, take a bunch of pictures in the snow, and send them to the ladies who sold me this. (i also had to promise to at least try to find a matching toque, which is doubtful, but of course i *will* try.)
which i fully intend to do, of course. i hardly ever get actual *commissions* to get dolled up. usually i just do it because well, darling, someone has to provide some sort of visual ambiance.
there’s nothing quite like buying something practical *and* luxurious. and, you know, mink.
of course, actually *having* a mink coat now means that i cannot any longer use it as a figment of sarcasm for impossible velleities and people who are lost in the throes of barbie complex (aka “i want everything, and i want it handed to me on a platter”). i’ll have to fall back on “i want a pony and a diamond ring the size of my head, but you don’t see me getting them, do you.”
oh, my poor belabored reader. you thought this was the end of my pompous blathering, didn’t you? alas.
more momentarily.
things are cheap in the Ancestral Lands. especially antiques, because the market for them isn’t as good as it is in more civilized areas of the world.
i just like antique suitcases. of course, they’re pretty kitschy-soughtafter right now, so you know what they’re like if you’ve ever tried to price one at a flea market. this one has latches that work, a bakelite handle and the interior is quite intact.
it was $26.
it was the perfect thing to haul home stuffed full of these:
Nancy Drew. lots of Nancy Drew. LOTS AND LOTS OF NANCY DREW.
these aren’t rare by any stretch of the imagination. but they’re mine, so i brought them home with me.
also? big big thanks to Janey and Lexxious for taking care of the childies while we were losing ourselves in tropical storms, blues and mindless conspicuous consumption.
he DOES TOO exist. and apparently he's glad to see his Daddy. (don't ask me; i'm as bewildered as anyone.)
it’s good that they got out with some of their lives left to live – certainly more than you’d (i’d) expect from the likes of pants-hitchin’ arkansas.
but i fail to see how it is justice to require three innocent people to plead guilty to something they patently did not do in order to be released from unjust imprisonment.
that isn’t justice. it’s a sop thrown to the career-stability of the good ol’boys who used the three of them as a convenient scapegoat to begin with. it may be good; but it isn’t right.
then again, nothing about this is or ever has been right.
you know what, arkansas? fuck you. fuck you right in the ear. the only comfort to be had in this is that these three victims will walk free when the good ol’ boys who decided they were throwaway people are mouldering in the ground.
this is what i am talking abowwwwd. it’s like the dieselpunk fairy godmother tried to reverse-engineer an Ape for Emma Peel, and got hopelessly bewildered, and this was the result.
click it. it likes that. but not too much, or it will impale you nimbly with an umbrella while making tea with the other hand.
Please join us for the “Life’s’ a Roller Scoot”. This will be an evening ride to Lakeside Amusement Park Friday night Aug 12th at 7 pm. We will head out from Washington Park to Lakeside for some great fun. Lakeside Amusement Park is a large facility with excitement, history and charm. Located in Denver, Colorado, at I-70 and Sheridan, on a picturesque lake (with great mountain views), trains, a merry-go-round, a drop tower, bumper cars, and many spinning rides. Operating at the same location since 1908, many Coloradans have a lifetime of memories of summer.
Parking is always FREE and picnics are welcome.
Gate Admission is $2.50 per person (with a .50 rebate valid towards the purchase of rides). Rides can be paid for either by purchasing an unlimited ride wrist tag I.D. or by buying individual ride coupons. Gate Admission and Unlimited rides for the 2011 season $13.75.
in case you somehow have been living under a rock the entire time you’ve been here, Lakeside is pretty consistently rated one of the best ‘old-fashioned’ amusement parks still kicking. it can be glorious, and it can be terrifying, and that’s what it ought to be, IMO.
info from a travel site*:
Christened “The Coney Island of the West” when it debuted in 1908, Lakeside Amusement Park in Lakeside, CO, was originally connected to the Denver city center via a direct tram line. A century later, its picturesque lakeside location and Rocky Mountain views – along with 40 antique and state-of-the-art rides – keep the park top-of-mind with fun seekers. Two miniature, coal-fired locomotives originally built for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair take train riders on leisurely excursions, and the 1908 carousel’s carved wooden ponies gallop effortlessly under the gentle coaxing of a new generation of little buckaroos. Lakeside’s late-night hours conjure bygone days when weekends were solely for play, and the illuminated 150-foot Tower of Jewels, once home to Big Band concerts and dance marathons, remains a post-sunset spectacle. Retro neon signs beckon park-goers to ride the Wild Chipmunk** or to take the wheel of an Auto Skooter. Best of all, on weekdays, an unlimited ride wristband costs less than parking at Disneyland.
*this travel site shall remain nameless and linkless due to the ridiculous amount of trouble i had to go through just to get it to load and my complete unwillingness to subject readers to the same fate, but trust me, it was a big name
**not recommended for those who enjoy things like Advanced Limb-Retention and Professional Standards of Breathing
although i haven’t seen it, for reasons already stated. (i lost my battle with cynicism many years ago – although personally, i call it realism – probably because i never found any particular reason to fight it in the first place. )
i’m glad Hanks likes scooters personally. i’m glad it’s a reasonably realistic presentation of ride groups in general. i’m still not brainwashed enough a target market that i SIMPLY MUST JUST MUST see anything they toss some scoots into. i don’t particularly care for the average minivan-driving suburbanite mom comparing me (or whoever) to a bunch of platitude-spouting stock quirksters in a mealy-mouthed julia roberts movie; but then, i generally don’t care what suburban soccer mom types think about me or anything else anyway.
i do hope people are enjoying it. *shrug* it sounds as if it might not make you stab yourself in the face or drink yourself insensible.
that’s all i can say about it.
1. there is a ride saturday that meets at sportique highlands at 5:30 PM to see this, scoots only, special screening and a short ride.
2. i have an astonishingly low chick-flick tolerance. i get enough estrogen vicariously from mr. tillinghast’s brainwashed cud-chewing cow coworkers and facebook’s plethora of breeder bitches with nothing but baby pictures to show for their lives; i don’t need any more from the culture at large.
3. especially when they throw in a scooter element as a plot element to suggest tritely Free-Spirited Yet Not Really Badass. i’m sick of having a sop thrown to my feelings and i resent having my interests played on as an obvious marketing gimmick. i’m not a market niche, i’m a bitch with short legs and a frighteningly big brain, leave behind an individual.
sooo i’m probably not going. you kids have fun, though.
yeah, we’ll take that too. one means the other, you know. or didn’t you know? forgive us, we are completists.
you may say, as a famously stupid compilation has said,
they’re mad.
well, that”s just not true. no generalization is true, anyway.
(all virgos are mad)
but we aren’t.
say of us that there are more of us in this hemisphere than there are all the rest of you combined,
(nitpicky)
and you will come close to the truth,
which is:
who the fuck do you think keeps the trains running on time?
(sticklers)
which is:
who do you think keeps the traffic running right?
who keeps things working while the rest of you are off gallivanting about?
who makes sure the bridges don’t fall out from under you?
(sticklers)
who are the workhorses who truly make sure this world runs as it should? thanklessly, i should say, because we know
someone has to. who’ll be the nitpicking badguy, who makes sure shit runs aright, for everyone else’s good?
are we mad, then?
is someone else going to step up and do it?
i’ll tell you a secret. the world is upheld by a vast cabal! a secret underground network of people
pledge to CPR in the next hour and you could win a people!
(they don’t really get 100 mpg, but it’s damn sure better than cage mileage.) when you win this, you can give them your oogy old car and be one of the cool kids at last.* (i gave them my car two years ago, and it was super easy and hassle-free.)
this is also a pretty tall scoot, although its profile is narrow. good for boys and leggedy ladies too.
go now!
*mostly. sort of. or you could trade it in for half a vespa, and actually be one of the cool kids
isn’t it odd how terrible things get seared onto your brain?
these PSAs were pretty common on PBS in northern mississippi when i was a very small child.
i remember being, like, three, and crying hysterically in uncontrollable terror every time one of these came on. and since there was at least one a day, my poor mother, having to deal with a normally sunny, self-entertaining child, a happy drawer of maidens and clouds and willie nelson, who at apparently random intervals would come tearing from the TV room into whatever area she was in, at WARP SPEED, leaving behind a contrail of mucus, hiccups, and 100-decibel dopplerized distress.
i imagine those couple of years for her being a little bit like life is now for the nice lady with the Simple Dog, which animal is always completely sincere and frequently inexplicable (and often, it appears, disastrous).
anyway, i still have a certain aversion to this image. i’m not sure i would drink or eat anything this sticker was on to this day, even if i knew rationally beyond any shadow of a doubt that it was perfectly harmless. i’m avoiding looking at it right now, really.
pnut galry