one shot one kill...

Here's the thing. I had this idea a couple o' weeks ago essentially to combine two of man's greatest inventions namely the driving range and the shooting range. So the idea was that we would have one guy tee off and drive the ball as far as he can. The other guy stands ready with a frickin' 12-gauge and attempts to blast the ball out of air. This would give an added sense of competition to the confluence of two beautiful sports. A work of pure athletic asthetics.

On a flight the other day I was trying my best to ignore Mission Impossible 3. As is customary when the movie finished they showed some short comedy sketches. And one of the sketches involved a guy with a shotgun at a driving range shooting unsuspecting golfers' balls from the air. A cheap cheap version of a very sexy idea.

Well I had another idea a couple o' weeks ago at a wedding reception. And I am hoping that this one hasn't been stolen because it is in the area of national security and I think it is a really really good idea. Here goes:

If I am ever tapped by the CIA to use my sexy skills as a secret agent in the service of our nation's interests abroad I have an idea as to how to perform certain covert duties. If there were a high-value target that needed to be disposed of I would use...

a poisoned urinal cake.

Here is how it works. You develop a urinal cake which has some kind of poison gas embedded in it like chlorine or something. When the unsuspecting target goes to the old WC to take care of some urgent business he unwittingly releases the gas and... one shot one kill, baby. Plus the urinal cake is used up in the process so there is no evidence. And who would be suprised at the trace smell of chlorine in a restroom with a regular cleaning schedule? The perfect solution.

(By the way does anyone happen to have Ahmenininahjodd's address?)

and speaking of the waters...

I ran into two texts several years ago at about the same time. And for me something in the confluence of these two texts was rather meaningful. When I mentioned it back then, my friend Sara put them together in a lovely frame for me which was really sweet and I rediscovered it several weeks ago when going through the few boxes which contain my things. Anyway, I mention it now because these two texts and their confluence came back to me tonight. So thought I would share them. Both make statements and I think the second text sort of answers and brings a kind of completion to the first. The first is a poem composed by a man named William Carlos Williams. The second is a psalm of the sons of Korah.

The Seafarer

The sea will wash in
but the rocks - jagged ribs
riding the cloth of foam
or a knob or pinnacles
with gannets -
are the stubborn man.

He invites the storm, he
lives by it? Instinct
with fears that are not fears
but prickles of ecstasy,
a secret liquor, a fire
that inflames his blood to
coldness so that the rocks
seem rather to leap
at the sea than the sea
to envelop them. They strain
forward to grasp ships
or even the sky itself that
bends down to be torn
upon them. To which he says,
It is I! I who am the rocks!
With out me nothing laughs.

Psalm 46

God is our refuge and our strength,
A very present help in time of trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, thou the earth should change
And though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea;
Though its waters roar and foam,
Though the mountains quake at its swelling pride. Selah.

There is a river that makes glad the city of God,
The holy dwelling place of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her, she will not be moved;
God will help her when morning dawns.
The nations made an uproar, the kingdoms tottered;
He raised his voice, the earth melted.
The LORD of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our stronghold. Selah.

the sea will wash in...

Well, today I saw what I want for Christmas.

Don't know if I am a good enough boy this year though.

cinderella had it easy...

So I am attending this black tie event in a couple of weeks. Actually it is 'black tie optional'. I guess this is a milestone or something, because it will be the first time I will have worn a tuxedo except as a member of one of those wedding party thingies.

And it brings up an interesting question:
What sort of footwear should I wear with my tux?

Here is the thing. Every online resource I checked out said that I should wear shiny black dress shoes with my tux, preferable patent leather. But every time I have worn a tux it has come with those dumb patent leather dress shoes and they are ugly, uncomfortable, and just plain poorly made.

So can anyone suggest any other footwear options that would look sexy with a tux?

another business idea (this one's for betzhi)...

Alright, once again looking for investors.

Here is the plan: West Coast Mopeds.

We take old scooters and mopeds. I am talking Vespas, Sprees, and even the old retro mopeds with the bike pedals. We take them and turn them into sweet custom choppers. Serious chrome, ape-hangers, massive horsepower, and everything you'd expect in a sexy custom ride. Then we give them custom paint, and Harley Davidson branding (HD will be so stoked!).

My own personal ride? The Captain America moped chopper. Gonna roll that thing through the desert Easy Rider style.

Maybe we'll even get a reality show.

Who's in?

nomads, cannibis, and foreign policy...

So I was at Gin's tonight, enjoying a roast half-chicken and a slice of chocolate meringue pie with my old friend Herodotus.

Now Herodotus was speaking of a people known as the Scythians who lived in what is now southern Russia and Eastern Europe. The Scythians lived just past the edge of the civilized world. While the Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and myriad others built farms and cities, conquered, traded and fell, the Scythians, on the fringe, survived them all. Wave after wave of the armies of civilization fell at the feet of the horsemen from the North. And Herodotus made some interesting observations about these crazy cats:
This greatest thing that they have discovered is how no invader who comes against them can ever escape and how none can catch them if they do not wish to be caught. For this people has no cities or settled forts; they carry their houses with them and shoot with bows from horseback; they live off herds of cattle, not from tillage, and their dwellings are on their wagons. How then can they fail to be invincible and inaccessible for others?

Essentially, people who have none of the constructs of civilization have certain advantages over those who depend on highly organized structures. They have nothing concrete to lose. There are disadvantages as well, but how do you hold up against an enemy who has no home to destroy, no land to invade, and who can disappear into the horizon at will?

Herodotus also says:
The Scythians take the seed of this hemp and, creeping under the mats, throw the seed onto the stones as they glow with heat. The seed so cast on the stone gives off smoke and a vapor; no Greek steam bath could be stronger. The Scythians in their delight at the steam bath howl loudly. This indeed serves them instead of a bath, as they never let water near their bodies at all.

So these folk were hanging out in the steppes, riding their horses, shooting their bows, and getting stoned off their ponies. Every now and again they would roll up on Media or Anatolia, beat down the locals, pillage a bit and enjoy the local fare, and then head back to the homeland for a bit of a cannibis sweat lodge. And yet, for some reason, we have based our civilization on those of the people they consistently plundered.

I'll bet no Scythian kid ever argued with his parents about having to take a bath.

on the homeland...

Revisited Yehuda Amichai today, the Israeli poet. With all that has been going on in Israel and Lebanon lately, his words keep echoing. I read that in 1973 when some students were called up they went back to the University and grabbed their gear, their rifles, and their copies of Yehuda Amichai's poetry. Chana Bloch, who relayed that story also translated the following poem from his original in Hebrew.

Wildpeace

Not the peace of cease-fire,
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk about only a great weariness.
I know that I know how to kill,
that makes me an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
A peace
without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
without words, without
the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
light, floating, like lazy white foam.
A little rest for the wounds-
who speaks of healing?
(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation.
to the next, as in a relay race:
the baton never falls.)

Let it come
like wildflowers,
suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace.

a fragment...

Yes, perhaps all hearing is proximity
and so we enter into the same space
Hear O Israel
to share a new communion
The LORD is your God
immediate and empty
The LORD is one
as the wineglass waiting to be filled.

on certain ethical implications of fossil fuels...

Oil is a topic greatly weighed in discussions of the politics, economics, and ecologics in these, our times. Especially now, with growing concerns of politically driven supply shortages and environmental implications, we must look clearly at the reality of how we will continue to acquire energy, and what consequences will result from the means we elect to use. I wish to bring one more strand into this discussion, one which has been thus far ignored. I intend to address some inherent moral issues regarding the use of fossil fuels, apart from the resultant effects of said use.

Geologically speaking, coal occurs in seams which lie in various areas of the world at a relatively consistent depth below the surface. And these coal seams run roughly parallel to the the layers of sedimentary rock which again roughly parallel the basic contours of the surface of the earth. Oil, as a liquid, generally occurs in pockets or pools at some depth beneath the surface. These are the fossil fuels that we use to drive the feverish pace of our post-modern lives. And we acquire them by digging shafts and drilling holes to pull them up from beneath the ground.

What is coal? What is oil? Essentially, fossil fuels are the result of carbon, pressure, and time. And this carbon was provided by the decayed remains of living organisms, this pressure by the weight of the strata above, and this time by that mysterious river whose source we can only imagine.

So I ask, how might a great layer of the decayed remains of living organisms be layed down at a relatively consistent depth beneath strata of sedimentary rock at some time, rather remote from the present? The Noahic flood, of course. In this flood, according to the Scriptures, all living things perished save those on the ark. And when this great mass of living creatures perished, their remains would have settled, buried in the sediment at the receding of the waters. This gives account for a significant amount of carbon in a consistent layer beneath sediment for a great period of time. And the result is the layer of coal and the pools of oil beneath the surface of the earth. Consider also the fact that the world's great reserves lie geographically near what we might understand to have been the center of antedeluvian civilization.

And this is the source of some tremendous moral implications for the use of fossil fuels. How can we justify unceremoniously pumping the remains of our antedeluvian ancestors into our vehicles?

Nearly every civilization in the world considers the bodies of their dead to be sacred, things to be respectfully and soberly interred or treated in some ceremonious way. They are not to be violated, and certainly never to be trafficked. And especially those civilizations which are most involved in the fossil fuel industry would find the desecration or commercial trafficking of corpses to be simply unconscienable. Can you imagine such a thing in the United States? Or in the Arab countries where, by and large, bodies may not even be exhumed in even the most respectful of ways. And yet for decades we have pumped millions of gallons of the remains of real human beings from the ground, refined them, and crassly burned them at a rate of between ten and thirty miles to the gallon. Remoteness of time and lineage is not an issue: we are burning human beings to heat our houses, to run our cars, and to make shingles for the steeples of our churches. Ours is a world powered by the desecration of corpses.

It could be argued that we cannot know for certain whether a given amount of fossil fuel came from the bodies of human beings or from the carcasses of animals. Perhaps I am merely buying the remains of an animal at the local Sunoco. Perhaps it is not someone's grandmother who is fueling my trip to the grocery store. But is it really all that much better if you are pumping a puppy dog into your gas tank? Or a dolphin? Or a dead kitten?

One thing is certain: We must consider the moral implications of fossil fuels, and we must rebuild our energy policy after considering the depth of the realities inherent in our actions to date.