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Showing posts from 2009

Slef

Slef Stripped of self The connection to others Is the touch of god. David eats old hamburgers the day after, Still drunk and happy, He looks to me and says, “All I can taste is cold with pickles.” Tommy lives to skate and fight And live he does, In a bruised and battered Blur of every night. Kirk barbecues at 4 a.m. in dark. He eats nothing but chicken. He cranks the sound and self to twelve And dances alone with his cats. Michael works the nights at a hospital, Both nurse and addict He tells the ill the pain will stop, But it won’t. And stripped of self The connection to others Is the touch of god. Mike Brady 2010/17

Road trip FAQs for the uninterested

1. The cop that stopped me in Barstow needs more color. He was big in a fat kind of way, ugly with a steroidal acne blush, and scary on a Steven King travels through Nevada while dreaming of lepers tripfest. I kept thinking he wanted to pull me out of the car window in pieces, if needed. If I were a woman, I would have dialed 911 before rolling the window down. 2. Route 66 from the Bagdad Café to Golf across the desert is unrideable – the max speed is 40mph, and it’s a rough ride at that. It has obviously not had maintenance in the last 30 years. On the other hand, and meth lab, barring transportation problems, might find a nice home in the Mohave – and maybe you should think about that late at night while driving alone (see #1.) 3. As a child, I had three-year relationships with people (Army brat.) I’ve learned to keep the magic going as a n adult, with difficulty, but am learning that it’s sometimes more about my fear of being found out than it is timing and readjustmen

Road Home

After wandering the desert for a few days, I’ ve made it back in one piece, tired but unchanged in spirit. Wherever I go, I find myself alone in a place, and when I return to where I started, I find I’m back to the same place, with me. No gestalt, or awareness – and a change that will only be seen in time – or not. Left Tonopah early and had a nice, non-stop drive up and around highway 95 (Nevada just has two roads going different directions with the name of 95 – it calls the one I’m on ‘Alt 95’.) I has been wonder getting off the freeway and taking 2 lane roads on this trip – most of my time is spent alone – if I get too near another car, I just pass them or slow down – usually I pass them. I don't like people in front of me when I'm driving -- it takes too much attention. People are unlike the road -- they can act stupid and surprising, even to themselves. The road gives notice that doesn't take a psychologist to figure out, and it can be guarded against surprise with

Seligman to Tonopah, the hard way

At the crack of 5, I chose to sleep until 7. Kingman to Seligman, with a stop at the Grand Canyon Caverns, was a smooth, magic glide of a trip. Even Hackberry’ ruins looked clean in the bleach of the morning sun. I was the only one at the Caverns, usually a meeting ground for elderly Germans, and just sat in the sun for a bit – then headed to Seligman. I’ve never seen it look better – painted, prosperous and unchanged. At the hotel right outside of downtown – where I spent a week as a child waiting for my mom to get the station wagon fixed – a new manager had redone the place. He said that, ‘the old ladies son had ran it into the ground’ until he took over. I estimated the room number when he asked me (memory only remembers magical thoughts,) and he opened it up for me – looked plain, but sort of like I thought it should. A nice guy with a clean motel – sans pool – which queers it a bit. I took pictures and told him I’d pass on the place to others. Ate at place, ‘Westside Lilo’s Café.’

Same thing, Except different

I am not that good at letting people know what’s going on with me – never have been; doubt I’ll change. So – this is an update to all who read this, maybe not the stuff in my head that makes it smoke on cold days, but the where, and a few facts – hopefully illustrated with marginal pictures. Fired on Friday last – for being me – the best me possible under extended exposure and grinding. Signed up for the State tit on Saturday, and on the road today. Left early and zipped through San Jose. Stopped at Harris Ranch, off Highway Five, a couple of hours later – just in and out with Tri-tip. Noticed the Hollister cut-off on 152 had been finished – good work state. Thought for the morning – “They torture wine to make it better – why not people” (Well... because they are people.) Cut over to 99 at the Lost Hills exit and managed to drive straight through to Boron. Boron is a place that I’ve passed over the years on the Freeway—it always looked like a residential, planned community o

Only Until This Cigarette Is Ended

Only Until This Cigarette Is Ended  by Edna St. Vincent Millay Only until this cigarette is ended, A little moment at the end of all, While on the floor the quiet ashes fall, And in the firelight to a lance extended, Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended, The broken shadow dances on the wall, I will permit my memory to recall The vision of you, by all my dreams attended. And then adieu,—farewell!—the dream is done. Yours is a face of which I can forget The color and the features, every one, The words not ever, and the smiles not yet; But in your day this moment is the sun Upon a hill, after the sun has set.

9 Quotes for a Friday

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." — Groucho Marx "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." — Anaïs Nin "I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." — Marilyn Monroe "The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me." — Ayn Rand "And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." — Sylvia Plath "We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be." — C.S. Lewis "Kiss me and you'll know how important I am." — Sylvia Plath The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a though

Tiny lamp spans quantum and classical physics

"Physicists in California have made the smallest ever incandescent lamp using a carbon nanotube as the filament. The nanotube is so small it behaves as a quantum mechanical system but it's just large enough that the classical physics rules of thermodynamics should apply. Analyzing the light emitted from the tiny light will give the team a better picture of what happens in the twilight zone between the quantum and classical worlds." And the best three response to this article are as follows: 1. How many quantum physicists does it take to change a light bulb ? Three. Two to do it, and one to renormalise the wave function. 2. You Fool! You altered the outcome by observing it! 3. I just replaced all the lamps in my house with these, but they just don't seem to brighten up the room like the old ones, and now my cat is missing. I love physics humor -- tight but bouncy.

It's in the Translation

The Lords Prayer translated from Aramaic into English, rather than from Aramaic to Greek to Latin to English O cosmic Birther of all radiance and vibration! Soften the ground of our being and carve out a space within us where Your Presence can abide. Fill us with your creativity so that we may be empowered to bear the fruit of your mission. Let each of our actions bear fruit in accordance with our desire. Endow us with the wisdom to produce and share what each being needs to grow and flourish. Untie the tangled threads of destiny that bind us, as we release others from the entanglement of past mistakes. Do not let us be seduced by that which would divert us from our true purpose, but illuminate the opportunities of the present moment. For you are the round and the fruitful vision, the birth-power and fulfillment, as all is gathered and made whole once again. <<< more words The Lord's Prayer in Late Modern English, Book of Common Prayer, 1928

They Hate You

"One rule to follow when evaluating the news stories being pushed onto us by the media: If it's spectacular, world-shaking, and has the capacity to significantly alter the course of your life even though you live thousands of miles away from where it happened, then it's probably bullshit. Whenever you hear about some really big, truly world-changing phenomenon, then it is usually speculation, bullshit speculation meant to get you to stick around through the commercial break. (…) The media has calculated that people are dumb and easily tricked. Push the right buttons and you have yourself a loyal audience. Missing little kid, serial killer, robbery on video, live police chase, natural disaster, cute animal story, big panic story. Over and over again. People never get tired of it. Sell them something big to panic about and you will insert urgency in their lives, something to do, something to buy, some excuse to call or email their kids. None of it has to make sense provid

9 quotes for a Monday

The young don't feel any great need to wait for the Walk sign before they cross the street. They feel invulnerable. Over time, you better appreciate the consequences of each action. You see people get burned, you see friends fall apart, you go to a few heartbreaking funerals. You begin to realize that survival requires cunning, and as a hedge, as part of a long-term strategy for improving your odds, you wait on the corner until you get the signal to walk. -Joel Achenbach He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it. -Douglas Adams Ignorance of your profession is best concealed by solemnity and silence, which pass for profound knowledge upon the generality of mankind. -"Advice to Officers of the British Army", 1783 Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. -Howard Aiken Well, he's not psyc

Aurora for help

One year after Hurricane Katrina I stopped in Slidell La. to eat a tasty meal with a refreshing beverage on a killer hot day. Since my sister had lived there in the nineties for a few years, I’d got a couple of names from her in advance – a menu of possibilities, mostly fishy, jambalaya kind of food. Not only were the restaurants she had recommended no longer there – some of the roads mentioned as landmarks for me were gone as well. I ended up at a crowded Carl’s Jr. drive thru right off the freeway. That was some fucking storm. While staying in an upscale hotel near the new Denver airport last week We decided to put the feedbag on and checked with the concierge (desk clerk) for a few good local ideas. With the supplied handy, preprinted map and a rental car, we picked a few choices and headed out to eat. The map was not to scale, but otherwise clear and labeled with individual eating places. All of the big names in off freeway dining – Applebee’s ’, Ruby Tuesday ’s, etc. wer

Happy Fucking Earth Day

People celebrating earth day is like a cancerous tumor giving thanks for the physics of blood transport. As we speed though our lives, and all living things around us, in a semi-uncontrolled frenzy of rape and pillage, at times, apologists among us make the small gestures that placate individuals in small intimate ways.– this is Earth Day -- let's do the sympanthy dance on it. I have a hard time seeing us as anything thing less than a conscious blight on the earth, with only the curse of our best of intentions towards it as long as the lights don’t get too dim and it doesn’t cost more than talk.

Socialists in the House

"It is always pitiful when any human being falls into a condition hardly more respectable than that of an animal. How much more pitiful it is when the person who falls has had all the advantages!" Kilgore Trout An Alabama congressman told local officials this week that he's worried about the number of socialists in Congress, and he put the number already there at 17. "Some of the men and women I work with in Congress are socialists," Rep. Spencer Bachus, the top Republican on the Financial Services Committee, said at a breakfast with city and county officials. The congressman made his comment on the heels of a Rasmussen poll that found 53 percent of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism , 20 percent favor socialism and 27 percent were not sure which is better. You can tell by the way Bachus says it that he feels he's pointing out a bad thing to sic the dogs on -- you, the public, being the dogs. I picture him beaming and proud,

Love, a poem by lola Haskins

Love She tries it on, like a dress. She decides it doesn’t fit and starts to take it off. Her skin comes, too. El Amor y La Mujer Se lo prueba, como si fuera un vestido. Decide que no le queda, Y empieza a quitarselo. Su piel se desprende, tambien. Lola Haskins (2017 ed. -- I like this very much)

Drug companies to cripple more sick people for the money

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090408-715806.html A Food and Drug Administration panel said Wednesday that AstraZeneca PLC's (AZN) Seroquel could be used as add-on therapy for patients with depression but said the drug shouldn't be used alone because of concerns about side effects. The FDA called a meeting of its psychopharmacologic advisory panel to discuss "concerns regarding exposing a greatly expanded population to a drug with known metabolic side effects and a possible risk of tardive dyskinesia ," a neurologic disorder that can be caused by drug exposure. The company is facing more than 9,000 lawsuits in the U.S. from people who allege the drug caused various health problems such as diabetes . This is another schizophrenic drug now approved for severe depression. The public needs to know that these drugs do not have the 'normal' side effects of anti-depressants -- prolonged ejaculation, dry mouth etc. When you see a crazy man walking

A Pirate's Code of Conduct for BitTorrent

"One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract. I said, 'Wait - you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it? Who the f**k made that rule? Trent Reznor NIN "In the 17th century, when groups of men plundered the seas in ships filled with rats and scurvy, they agreed on a code to keep themselves civilly uncivil. I propose the same for BitTorrent . My code isn't necessarily the code for everyone. But it is the code for my ship, my computer, my slow-ass DSL connection that can't steal anything worth a damn anyway. Here is the code that I live by. Article One Every man shall upload half of what he downloads, with the saints filling in the rest. It's like tossing back a tiny fish so that it may grow into a great whale...only so we can hunt said whale and feast on its blubber during a later voyage. Article Two TV is to be downloaded, movies are to be at

The Story of Suzanne

"It's not just the copulation. It is the whole understanding that we are irresistibly attracted to one another, and we have to deal with this. We are irresistibly lonely for each other, and we have to deal with this, and we have to deal with our bodies and with our hearts and souls and minds, and it's an urgent appetite." L. Cohen ...And jesus was a sailor When he walked upon the water And he spent a long time watching From his lonely wooden tower And when he knew for certain Only drowning men could see him He said all men will be sailors then Until the sea shall free them But he himself was broken Long before the sky would open Forsaken, almost human He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone... L. Cohen

St. Paul, the Used Car Guy

--> "Il y a un peu de testicule au fond de nos sentiments les plus sublimes et de notre tendresse la plus ̩pur̩e" Denis Diderot --> I have mentioned to people over the years that St. Paul Рthe one buried under the big house in Rome Рwas, basically, a used donkey salesman who successfully packaged and sold Christianity to the masses. This article expands on that image Рmaking it pretty and businesslike, but still at heart, the story of a driven sales guy who could have sold hearing aides to the blind, but decided to go non-profit. And, this is a real eye opener, Jesus was not really all that nice Рit was just revisionist religion and good lighting for the advertisements that allowed him to become less ethnic and more airbrushed and savior like -- much like Leaf Garrett.

Walkabout

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. Albert Camus “The term Walkabout comes from the Australian Aboriginal. The idea is that a person can get so caught up in one’s work, obligations and duties that the truly important parts of one’s self become lost. From there it is a downward spiral as one gets farther and farther from the true self. A crisis situation usually develops that awakens the wayward to the absent true self. It is at this time that one must go on walkabout. All possessions are left behind (except for essential items) and one starts walking. Metaphorically speaking, the journey goes on until you meet yourself. Once you find yourself, you sit down and have a long talk about what one has learned, felt and done in each other’s absence. One talks until there is nothing left to say — the truly important things cannot be said. If one is lucky, after everything has been said and unsaid, one looks up and sees only one person ins

Mark to Market Rule Change

--> --> "After intense pressure from lawmakers and some factions of the financial industry, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) voted on Apr. 2 to make it easier for corporate management to value assets on their balance sheets with less regard for market prices. (...) The upshot, critics argue: Investors will lose even more confidence in banks' financials, exacerbating the very doubt that has helped drive the financial sector's rout in recent months. "It's downright Orwellian to protect the public. This 'oversight body' would blind them from the mistakes made by financial institutions by making accounting less transparent," Jack Ciesielski, editor of the Analyst's Accounting Observer , fumed on his blog." Mark to Market is simple. All property and money is in the now. Promise and guessing – even past hopes and dreams, all count for nothing – it’s the bird you have, not the Turkey you bought

Religious Morality

"Among the many annoying consequences of religion, the misunderstandings concerning morality that it fosters are among the most displeasing. … This means that a great many religious people naively assert that morality absolutely requires God’s existence. Some will even claim that if God did not exist, nothing would stop them from going about committing all sorts of crimes. Whenever someone makes such a claim, simply ask him, “S o you’d fuck your dog in the ass while ripping out and eating your wife’s eyeballs if God did not exist ?”" I was reading this very informative, straight forward and seemingly scientific article and came to the highlighted section above. My eyes opened wide; I giggled and snorted; I became a fan. A good example carries a lot of weight -- but a bat shit crazy, over the top explosion of a example stomps the weight down -- sometimes obliterating the thought, but always making the spash colorful. Kudos.

10%

--> "Smokers are gasping at higher cigarette and cigar prices as the largest federal tobacco tax increase in history takes effect. "Oh my gosh," Bernardo Torres said Tuesday when a clerk at a CVS Pharmacy in Falls Church, Va., told him the new price, which went up in anticipation of the tax increase. Torres wanted to buy his aunt two cartons of cigarette-size cigars, but he walked away empty-handed after hearing the new price: $134. The tax on little cigars went from 4 cents to $1.01 a pack" --> I think that only an evolutionary psychologist could really explain it – but it seems that no matter what the cost or what the price, 10% of people will take 20 years off their lives to smoke cigarettes. That’s also the percentage of service people who came back from Vietnam addicted to heroin that stayed addicted after getting treatment. The bottom of the barrel or the evolutionary cream at the top? I think that maybe smokers are nature’s w

La Mucca

"They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my reality." ~ Frida Kahlo This just sounds so much better in Italian -- I take back all the bad things I've said about translators over the years... La mucca da Mike Brady Il mio ampio piegate indietro da anni di portare il tipo di peso grasso persone per scontato. Forte come un bue Ossa compressa Denti terra a matrici Acres prima di andare a dormire. Affidabile, stabile rocciosa costante. Io vivo senza capire Sono come sostanziale. Mi sento con un lento legname, spostare con attenzione i passaggi, e mettere in pausa la metodica della mia vita a ruminare. Le cose cambiano e il sole sorge. Fare ciò che è davanti a me a fare fino a che non mi mangi. (or, in English) The Cow by Mike Brady My broad back bent from years of carry the type of weight fat people take for granted. Strong as an ox Bones compressed Teeth ground to st

Jessica Lange

I think that once you have seen, ' The Postman Always Rings Twice ," you can never imagine Jessica Lange as undesirable. I've heard, and seen, reports on her aging but something deep inside of me wants her to be the counter help at that small roadside bakery I plan to retire at.

Zyprexa and Prozac, or, tethered to a fat ball of happy

Zyprexa is a nifty drug that the drug company Lilly put out a few years ago that was, up to now, used primarily for Schizophrenics. Better than most drugs for this condition, it had the one big drawback that Lilly refused to admit – it made skinny people fat and fat people obese. Long used for other conditions, like depression, in what is called an ‘off-label’ use, it has now been authorized for treatment of severe depression. As a user of effexor, a depression med also know for weight gain (though no where near as severe as Zyprexa,) I can only ask if the cure is the disease in this case. Schizophrenia might be worth giving up almost anything to improve – depression might not. Weighing 300 pounds and not being depressed seems very depressing to me. At some point being fat kills ambition, limits freedom and shuts down the willingness to move. Read the link below about Zyprexa – and pharmacy companies in general – and let me know what you think.

On Writing, Probabilities

Much like the electrons of an atom, thoughts spin around my head wildly, randomly and without a place to call their own. ‘ Words are shit, because they put you somewhere else. I’m trying to catch the things that are in between.’ – Steve McQueen Or, much like electrons, I write down what I’m thinking, collapse a wave function, to create a point of view from the bubble of nothing. But the thought is not the fullness of what I’m thinking or the thought itself in full. What is on paper is a slice of time – a spot on place and location that reflects, maybe, the direction things in my head were taking. Or maybe, the point of view comes from a twitch -- just a powerful oomph of dog eat dog movement in my head that claws its way out when the pen hit the paper. When I write a simple declarative statement, it becomes a condensation of a cloud. Probabilities and understandings getting squeezed like toothpaste to form, essentially, a thick point in time. The time gives the point a vi

Ode to Charles Bukowski's Women

"Of course it's possible to love a woman, if you don't know her too well." C. Bukowski Well Done by Mike Brady 3/2009 I enjoy a woman who has been with many men. The stink of lost youth as they put their clothes away at night And the eyes that follow your hands and not your heart Searching for the keys to locks you've hidden away. Though often rubbed to a crispy dry By the wear of innocence as worn from the flesh by time Still the excitable child within, The one that wanted Christmas and couldn’t wait, Still waits, making irritated pearls alone, Ever lost for still believing anymore. Now, the Italian Translation Well Done da Mike Brady Mi piace che le donne sono state con molti uomini La puzza di perdita di giovani sui loro vestiti di notte E gli occhi che seguono le vostre mani e non il tuo cuore Per le chiavi per serrature voi nascondere. Anche se spesso strofinato a un croccante secco Con l'usura di innocenza indossati da ca

Paying for Healthcare

Image via Wikipedia Just some simple thoughts: 1. One out of every five dollars goes to healthcare in the United States. 2. There is no way to lower the cost without lowering the coverage unless you eliminate the middle man – and there will always be a middle man. 3. You already pay for it even if you think you don’t. 4. The only argument is about who is going to pay, and that’s a selfish, circular argument – you already are paying. What you are really asking for is someone to hide the costs better. 5. If you think you are not paying – you aren’t looking. 6. Healthcare is not insurance – if it were, hippies would pay little and republicans the most. (old v. young) 7. If healthcare is not a right, then rationing is the way it’s going to go. http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2009/03/09/healthcare/

Making shit angels as therapy

“ Studies into clinical depression have yielded similar findings, leading to the development of an intriguing, but still controversial, concept known as depressive realism . This theory puts forward the notion that depressed individuals actually have more realistic perceptions of their own image, importance, and abilities than the average person. While it’s still generally accepted that depressed people can be negatively biased in their interpretation of events and information, depressive realism suggests that they are often merely responding rationally to realities that the average person cheerfully denies .” I think that seeing things too clearly is making me a bit blind to the beauty that’s all around me -- a beauty that needs a healthy dose of that good old gooey bullshit to really shine in the abstract of distraction that makes the lubricant of hopeful wishing attractive -- allowing for a different, and more cuddly, reality a become a possibility -- much like

Sweden's Pirates

I have a goal of someday writing a novel, selling it to a publisher, then making a living writing. Pirate Bay is a file sharing aggregate who takes copyrighted material and allows anyone to download it for free. I support them with all my heart and wish them the best. Talk about in congruent behavior -- this is something like cutting off my nose to spite my face. But there is more to the story. Copy write protection was seen in the past as a protection for the individual in his lifetime. Information was thought to be a good thing for society, but it was also felt that the person who provided new information should be allowed to live off it as a sort of reward for his hard work. After asutable amount of time it was expected to become free to all. It was felt very strongly that information should be both free and in the public domain as quick as possible. Copy write law is no longer protection for an individual -- it's a machine to stomp out innovation. I am still pi

Formal announcement of the opening of my campaign for the MacArthur Fellowship

“If not me, who? If not now when?” Mike Brady 2009 Q. What is the MacArthur Fellowship ? A. The MacArthur Fellowship is a five-year grant to individuals who show exceptional creativity in their work and the prospect for still more in the future. The fellowship is designed to provide recipients with the flexibility to pursue their creative activities in the absence of specific obligations or reporting requirements. There are no limits on age or area of activity. Individuals cannot apply for this award; they must be nominated . Q. What are the selection criteria? A. The selection decisions focus primarily on exceptional creativity, as demonstrated through a track record of significant achievement, and manifest promise for important future advances. Emphasis is placed on nominees for whom our support would relieve limitations that inhibit them from pursuing their most innovative ideas. Recipients must also be citizens or residents of the United States and must not hold ele