Fucking Pepito and his Paris Hilton rant. Twice now he's drawn our attention back to her. How stupid does he think we are? I have mad love for him and all, but nobody brings up her name unless they're interrested in perpetuating her fame and capitolizing on it. Like me for instance. Who doesn't realize that if Paris Hilton's name is at the top of the Lycos 50/Google searches, whatever you attach to her name is going to get bou-coup hits?

Doesn't anybody remember the fake battle between Biggie Smalls & Tupac? Between Britney Spears and Eminem? The drama-- either hate or love em, sold mucho albums & magazines, & increased the fame exponentially for each. Pepito's got her name in his mouth for a reason.

I'm still of the opinion she's an undercover mafioso CIA secret society spy-- she's sending hidden messages around the globe based on what color she wears for the day, or what accessories she promotes at any given moment. She flies a red miniskirt if her mission's succeeded, rocks a yellow halter top if it's failed-- like in that Hero Jet Li flick. I just can't fucking crack her code yet, man, and I don't know who she's really workin' for.. There's a method to her madness, trust me. Any non-linear Masonic tradition cryptographers in the house? Oh... didn't think so.

Anyway... every time Pepito hates on her-- I can't help but remember that insipid Edgar Frog post about the horrible fat & ugly ogre woman beast at the bus stop that he ... just.... couldn't .....stop himself from going around the block to check out again & again, & then going home to masturbate to the fantasy.. I think Pepito's got the same damn syndrome with Paris. Or Paris herself is writing that blog. Stranger things have happened. P&P Forever!! XXOO.


This is what I did to exploit her fame for my own purposes-- to get the damn kangaroo court appointed mouthpiece to check out the mechanical defects inherent in the Dodge minivan's adjustable pedals rather than let his DA pal go for the death penalty against an innocent man.....

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=eddie+rapoza+paris+hilton&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search

So-- yeah I whored out Paris's name at the pinnacle of her fame to help an innocent man, as did gazillions of other google users. You wonder why she's so incredibly famous? Anything at the top of a google seach list is going to be exploited, and their fame will only increase as a cult of news chasers latch on & hitch their wagon to a star. Anything.

From..... Whisper of the Heart


http://www.wingsee.com/ghibli/whisper/music.html

 

That first one there on that list blows my mind with it's joyfullness-- ol' synth midi rendition of John Denver's "Country Roads"... of all things, remade with Japanese lyrics "Concrete Road" in the film itself.

Check out the midi instrumental version online & listen through to the end. It's amazingly adorable.

Happy Happy Happy Music!!




Pics of the anime film....

http://carnage.fanfic.org/whisper.html

Whisper of the Heart (If You Listen Closely) DIRECTOR: YOSHIFUMI KONDO SCREENPLAY: HAYAO MIYAZAKI CHARACTER DESIGN: YOSHIFUMI KONDO, SATOSHI KURODA PRODUCER: STUDIO GHIBLI FILM 1995 With aspirations of becoming a writer, Shizuku Tsukishima reads voraciously. But someone seems to read as much as she. Seiji Amasawa’s name appears on the borrower’s list of all the books she has taken out from the school library and the public library. When she finally meets him, they don’t get along. But in getting mad at him, she follows a fat cat that leads her to the inspiration for her dreams and stories, the cat-doll Baron. She also gets to know Seiji through their love of music. The whisper of her heart is to write and Seiji’s is to play the violin. Unfortunately, reality looms over her in the form of National Exams.





And... an awesome Geocities page review by Princess Leene and Mak Kum Shi http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/4146/mimirev.html

Cute and Nasty.

Had to do the cute in those last 2 posts to balance out the nasty prior. Japanese anime is the best for cleaning my mental pallette. Hope it worked for you too.

Anyway...


My first used car was a hatchback. It was a stickshift, it was bright day-glo flourescent orange, and it was from Phoenix Arizona, a Datsun B210 with melted rubbery paint oozing around the window sealings. It growled like a Bengal, leaked every kind of fluid imaginable, and spewed out a soot cloud thick enough to terrify any chimneysweep. It was cute and it was nasty. Why do those things have to go hand in hand for me to enjoy myself?


http://www.motorbase.com/pictures/contributions/991202/ms_1975_datsun_sunny_120y_coup.jpg

http://www.vintagetechnology.com/ad_scans/trans_datsun_b210.jpg

 


As cute as it was, I still smile knowing that fucking death trap beast of a car is gone, smashed, mangled, and recycled in some pick-your-part mechanical cemetery.

Because if we hadn't split in that tin-can when its clutch went out on the Bay Bridge just past the MacArthur Maze, none of this would have happened in the first place.

Jesus.. just thinking about all that again is making me cringe. I'll have to finish this later.....

BloggermouthKen-- Let your temper skyrocket THROUGH THE ROOF--
I totally agree with your latest blog post today, brother!
http://bloggermouth.mindsay.com/


Somebody's got to speak up for the regular people.

If not their beloved famous heroes-- then who the fuck else??? Who else are we listening to but Hollywood icons? The Pope? The Queen? Donald Trump? Bill Gates? George Bush?? Who speaks for the common people but people who once were common-- who have the same hopes and fears & ideals as the rest of us?? George Bush never once in his life feared going to bed hungry, or wandered the streets without a home struggling for work. Plenty of performers have. Plenty of performers have the heart and the understanding to say and do something about it. Performers who don't have social principles and the will to stand up for them won't get my bucks. You don't need a PHD in economics to feel compassion-- those things tend to be mutually exclusive in the new corporate raider world.

http://www.talkaboutpeople.com/group/alt.fan.leo-dicaprio/messages/65426.html

 

Colin Farrell Combats Homelessness, Leonardo DiCaprio Rescues The Environment by nikola1tesla@aol (RestInParadise) Nov 23, 2003 at 11:48 PM GO BOYS!!!!!


Colin Farrell reads poetry, Donagh MacDonagh's "Dublin Made Me," for homelessness fundraiser.... Posted on Colin-Farrell.net November 22. 2003 "Focus Ireland's Dharma"

> I again steered some feathers. This time I am deeply moved and I feel
> obligated to post this mail that I got from a certain person from
> U.S.A. It is not complete e-mail, because it involves some private and
> intimate things, as well
> as it talks about personal problems concerning homeless friend who
> died couple of months ago. I just want you to read this. Do not pass
> it because it does not (directly) apply to Colin Farrell. I am being
> highly objective and rational about it, and I did thought twice before
> posting this, just as well as you can not be aware citizen of the
> world if you are not aware of the 'real' world life problems.
> Thank you and remember: homelessness does exist.

> > 'I was so greatly moved by Colin's choice of poems for Focus
> Ireland's fundraiser against homelessness, because it shows so
> honestly and so strongly the spirit of 'arrogant'defiance against the
> 'tithes' of society, and the love of voices against economic and
> social tyranny. For children who start their lives with nothing but
> hunger and trauma, for old folks who become frail and unable to fight
> for themselves, for people of all sorts who go a little bit crazy,
> lose their eyesight, or fall ill, there is a great chance that they
> will end up on the streets. Every step of the way there are fines,
> fees, bail, and car impoundments everywhere to pay, like 'tithes' even to the
> 'sea'. Dublin's history may be very different from San Francisco's, but
> the working class fight against economic and political oppression is
> universal. It is those voices I am so glad Colin is bringing back to
> light for the sake of the poor, misled, and disabled on the streets.
> They really have no voice now. It hasn't been fashionable for a very
> long time for famous people to address poverty and hunger likes it was
> years ago with the 'Feed the World' campaign, as if it doesn't sell
> enough magazines for being too depressing. For all the 'bad boy' hype,
> let's hope Colin's current shock value urges people to anger to change
> the pressures that lead to homelessness, and to offer a few new ways
> out. I am so happy he brought extra attention to the movie "Veronica
> Guerin." I don't pretend to know what his motivations are in choosing
> such quality messages in his movies, but the total effect is nice. The
> Hollywood glitter is nice to watch from time to time, but without
> heartfelt social action like this the entertainment world seems only
> empty and shallow.
>
> Unfortunately, the issue of criminalizing homelessness now might make
> some of the more stupid people in the world assume that somehow
> homeless people are all cold criminals that don't deserve help.
> Homeless people tend to get that way
> because they DON'T "cheat" another to survive. Many people fail to see
> that poor people are forced to defend themselves for their own
> survival, whether it is against the man in the street trying to kill
> you, or against the social,
> political, and economic conditions that keep a man down and his family
> struggling. How can you solve the problem of homelessness for any
> young adult or child when they cannot apply for any kind of public
> assistance once the have been in trouble with the law? How can we
> continually treat these people like criminals when many time their
> crimes of prostitution, petty shop-lifting, or fighting are the only
> things one can do to avoid abusive foster homes and juvenile hall?
> Being labelled a criminal is not the same as being homeless, but
> solving the problem of homelessness and making it easier for kids on
> the run to apply for housing help without getting in trouble would go
> very far in reducing the problem of crime.
>
> There just is no affordable housing in my area anymore, what with
> the success of the Silicon Valley edging out all available homes and
> shelters, and the panic of the upper class to criminalize the lower
> classes for defending their
> lives and families against violence, for selling themselves when they
> own nothing else, and for self-medicating with street drugs, poisonous
> substitutions for legal medications homeless people can not get on
> their own. Let's hope the
> rest of the world takes a look at Dublin's efforts now, and that
> fundraising for the homeless becomes a Hollywood trend again too.
>
> I hope you'll continue to publicize Colin's efforts for Focus Ireland,
> and maybe enlighten some of the rest of the world about the class
> struggles that Colin now embodies for this generation. So Minerva....
> Thanks again for your interest, and for your wonderful Farrell site
> that keeps me entertained and enlightened. Us 'little people' love
> you.'

>
> No, thank YOU for your letter Nikola1Tesla, and you know who you are
> and THANK YOU Colin Farrell, for reading Dublin Made Me by Donagh
> McDonagh. If you only knew what you did with this act.
>
> MINERVA
>
> Posted by Minerva at 09:46 AM

>
>
> Synopsis
> A rich and colourful celebration of the poetic heritage of Ireland, this
> CD book anthology features classic and contemporary Irish poems read by
> 100 of the best-known voices in Irish life, including Colin Farrell,
> Maeve Binchy, Bono, Pierce Brosnan, The Corrs, Bertie Ahern,
> Bob Geldof, Seamus Heaney, Marian Keyes and Sinead O'Connor. The
> collection includes famous poems such as Yeats's "The Fisherman" and
> Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" alongside new work from Ireland's
> finest living writers.As well as forming a living testament to the
> best of Irish writing, the collection is also a reminder that words,
> both oral and written, do make a difference with all
> royalties going to Focus Ireland, the country's largest and most
> respected charity for the homeless.
>
>
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0007174071/ref%3Dsr%5Faps%5Fbooks%5F1%5F1/202-7611551-2073449

 >
> ________________________________________________________________________________________ THAT, like Leonardio Dicaprio's substantial efforts to help clean up and protect the environment, make me so glad Hollywood actors are not forgetting the people that love them. :)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/entertainment/7318577.htm

 

Posted on Fri, Nov. 21, 2003

DiCaprio Speaks Out Against Global Warming Associated Press
LOS ANGELES -

Leonardo DiCaprio is using his fame to call on elected officials to reduce American dependence on oil and slow down global warming. The 29-year-old actor and conservationist narrated an online film called "Global Warning" as part of an Internet campaign organized by Global Green USA, an affiliate of Green Cross International. The campaign, which began Thursday, urges people to oppose the energy bill that's under debate in Congress by signing a "Pledge of Allegiance to American Energy Independence." The bill would provide $23 billion in tax incentives and includes measures to produce more coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power. The "Titanic" star said people should use energy more efficiently by supporting renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. In the film, DiCaprio criticized elected officials who "gained too much money and power off our addiction to oil" as being resistant to change. "We must demand a separation between oil and state," he said. "We can vote for leaders who care about protecting your health, the air and the environment." DiCaprio owns two hybrid cars powered by both gasoline and electricity, said Global Green president Matt Petersen, who worked with DiCaprio on the campaign.

--- On the Net: http://www.globalgreen.org/

COOL---  www.rathergood.com VERY COOL.  Cute AND Nasty!!-- No better combo.

Au Revior mon petit Pepito cheri. 

I'm depressed, and can't sleep so I'm up late, AGAIN and in the mood to recycle.... 

I really hate to think this way-- but... since there are people in life who actually enjoy harming other people-- I wouldn't doubt that if ghosts existed, those same spirits would get a kick out of haunting and harming others once they're dead.

This chick in my building says there are no insane spirits here-- they're all OK.

So-- I'm going to go by that. She tells me that the spirits here are trying to communicate with the living through my kids-- partly because my kids talk in their sleep. And-- she says, absolutely the building I live in-- which used to be the quiet low-key Bay Area equivalent of a secluded Chateau Marmont for vacationing Hollywood stars in the 1920s-- is undeniably haunted. OK-- so what then? If hauntings exist-- why wouldn't it be haunted. Thousands of people have stayed here-- there's got to be some drama with some of those souls.

For this small island town full of old family houses & shops, this building is HUGE-- it covers a whole city block, was built in the 20s, and has a grand ballroom, and a lobby full of chandeliers, mosaics, and Spanish dancer paintings. The ballroom is now a catering company because so many people were seeing, hearing, and feeling ghosts on and around the dance floor and in the pool. There were a lot of accidents and suicides here over the years-- always ruining special occasions, to the point that the hotel got a rep for being a bit cursed. I figure-- in any large building you're going to have your fair share of mishaps-- you can't blame the soul of the building or ghosts-- you blame people or disrepair, or you acknowledge fate or God or whatever. I just don't believe in curses. I can't let myself imagine bad spirits.

Check it out>

 http://www.alamedainfo.com/Alameda_Hotel_Central%20Street%20Side_CFC_.jpg

http://www.alamedainfo.com/Post%20Cards/600_PC_Hotel%20Alameda.jpg

 http://adams.patriot.net/~eastlnd2/rj/alt/rc/dance.jpg

 http://www.alamedainfo.com/1415_Broadway_Alameda_Hotel_Apts.jpg

 The place reminds me of the Shining and the Titanic on the inside sometimes-- but overall it's a really cool place. The rents amazingly cheap for this area-- way too many people have died here, and too many people assume it's haunted. Fact is-- a lot of people die in hotel rooms and cheap apartments, no matter where you live. Old folks, crack heads, depressed people, you name it. This building just happens to have character and a lot of artwork--& it's been the site of countless dances, weddings, and events, so it gets way more historical attention that your average haunted Victorian or Edwardian mansion around here. It's in a lot of people's wartime memories.

We have this huge aircraft carrier, the USS Hornet on the other side of town trying to be a tourist attraction for being haunted--

http://www.ghost-trackers.org/usshornet.htm

 and, my building is where the soldiers and sailors stayed with their honeys during WW2 before they shipped out-- so all the ghost hunters are on the lookout to feed their hobby with lost souls. Sometimes I have a hard time not freaking myself out-- but heck-- people have died anywhere and everywhere. If I were scared to be here-- I'd have to be terrified to drive the freeways.

So why can't I sleep?

http://www.seoulshamrock.co.kr/Irish%20Virus.jpg

Sprites! Spirits! Ahhhh!

Biggie Smalls Rap Translation....  One Interpretation.

http://www.bizbag.com/Misc%20articles/Rap%20Lyrics%20Translated.htm

10 ways to skin a cat-- but nobody wants a naked cat!

If you are unconvinced ask Puff Daddy...  Er.. I mean P Diddy.

Bring five women to the polls on Election Day:

Whether it's your mother, sister, neighbor, or friend, you probably know women who don't exercise their right to vote. In fact, almost 22 million women didn't vote in the 2000 election. These women represent the largest group of potential new voters that our campaign needs to reach. With your help and the TAKE FIVE program, we'll make sure these women make it to the polls on November 2.

Sign up for TAKE FIVE by visiting:

www.democrats.org/wvc/take5

 

I want to share with you an amazing letter we received at headquarters:

Dear Senator Kerry,

My friend is voting for only the second time in her life on November 2. That may not sound extraordinary, until I let you in on the little secret. My friend, Mamie, is only 103 years young. But more importantly, she is voting for the second time in her life, since women were given the right to vote in 1920. She was there for that monumental year, and she wants to be there for this historic occasion as well. She knows that the time she has left, whether it's 3 months or 5 years, can be used to speak her mind and hopefully influence others to vote. She did not exercise that right for a very long time, but now that she realizes that our future lies in our own hands, she knows where she must be on November 2. Mamie has been and will be your biggest supporter from here until Election Day. Mamie represents millions of women across the country, both young and old, and we're counting on you to reach out to these voices just waiting to be heard.

The Democratic Party's TAKE FIVE campaign effort is one important way to involve women in the most important election of our lifetime.

TAKE FIVE is all about women talking to other women about the issues that matter most to us. As a TAKE FIVE leader, you will develop a relationship with five women who didn't vote in 2000 and make sure they get to the polls on Election Day. It is that simple -- and can make a big difference.

Sign up today as a TAKE FIVE leader and we will provide you with all of the information and tools you need to get started:

http://www.democrats.org/wvc/take5

 

Please help us make sure that the voices of all women are heard on November 2. Forward this e-mail to your friends and sign tell them to sign up for TAKE FIVE. Sincerely, Tory Vallely, Director Women for Kerry-Edwards P.S. Join Women for Kerry-Edwards today by clicking here:

http://www.johnkerry.com/communities/women

OK-- I'll do my bit to round out the pirate talk in honor of the day, me homies. I mean maties. There's this huge Halloween block party they do in the Castro every year-- this incredibly bizarre costume shin-dig. My homegirl Jinx & I always go dressed in tandem, after the kids are in bed at their fathers.'

Last year, I told her I wanted to be a pirate. I had a mad cravin to step into Jonny Depps boots for her-- only because SHE has a psychotic crush on HIM. She squealed with delight, ran down to the fabric store, spent hours making striped and glittery sequined pirate bustiees, laced up plush velvet over wine colored poet shirts, and she bought me an eye-patch, a black felt triangular hat with a white stencil of a Jolly Roger on it, and a green feathered papier-mache parrot to stick on my shoulder-- which she spent half the night talking to in pirate talk..

With magical mischief in her eyes, she brushed on my face-powder and touched up my lip-gloss, helped me into my thigh high spike heeled boots, let me borrow her fuzzy blue smurf pelt jacket, and we both jumped in my hooptie like gilded swashbuckling mavericks.

I have to skip ahead, I really do. There's this moment where it feels like little pinpricks of bright wet sunshine are raining happily across each inch of your skin and everything you touch is scattering with sparkling brilliance, and your rushing bloodstream pulses with the electricly fluttering sensation of an infinite number of microscopic butterflies-- and if I actually stop to tell you what that feels like when your girl is fantasising that you are not yourself, but you are Johnny Depp, and she's making out with you in a throbbing full-body undulation as if you were him in the crush of a crowd listening to bands in the street on Halloween in the Castro-- I'll never fucking finish this. I'll forget to keep talking "Pirate" in honor of Pirate talking day. I'll drop my laptop and give her a call, and tease her a bit in "Pirate" instead as if I were actually Johnny Depp, and talk with her for a while reminiscing about "Parlay!," and where and how her fingertips could make me quiver and where and how my kiss would make her swoon, tongues of angels entwined in warmth and rebellious sisterly fiery pirate love, and I'd be there on that phone with her, instead of here finishing my story with you, and I'd be listening to her purr coyly, forgetting altogether how to talk in pirate, blushing, but remembering how happy she felt in my arms pretending I was someone else, and then I'd make plans to see her when her daughter's at her dad's and my sons are at their dad's.....

Fuck it-- look what you've gone and made me do...

See... I didn't want to get all worked up over her all over again because it just never works long-term between us. The inescapably poignant fatal flaw is that I'm just not in love with Johnny Depp myself, though he seems a nice boy and all-- I always fail miserably at impersonating him. This year-- this year-- I'll have her dress me as Angelina Jolie, and then as much as she resists, I'll force her to wear a short white skirt with an iron Alexander's lion helmet, topped with a big red fluffy plume, and see if we can't get an Oedipal toga party going where she'll happily submit to my sensual tongue's seduction. Or maybe I'll let my hair fall long and dark, and wear a soft buckskin with moccasins, then dress her in leather and armor, and make her wear a fake mustache and goatee, just for me. Then SHE can talk to me like a pirate, and I can concentrate on kissing her softly and insistently, sucking against her throat with my hands in her hair.

That's the least she could do for me, after making me play Ewan McGregor to her Nicole Kidman singing "Come Whay May" til we were both hoarse and blue in the face last Christmas. Little bitch.

This is Jinx on the right:

Here's Me....
 

Me again: 

Me on the left, Jinx on the right. Angelo's in the middle tryin to get lucky.  Tryin & Failin.  :)

Rocker's Back!!

He left a quick note on Pepito's blogspot comments.

Here's his new link:

http://rocker.blogs.com

Glad you made it through the storm, brother.  You were greatly missed.  I hate cold turkey.

Ah that Irish Spring-- "Manly, but I like it too."

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/story_pages/showbiz/showbiz5.shtml

How dare that little wench go on about this kind of stuff to the UK gossip papers?? What is this world coming to?? Slut.

Sexy little saucy knob hopping slut. I wonder if she has a chin dot. I'm starting to develop a real thing for those.

It's these kind of stories that make me wonder if those girls got permission to speak first. I wonder if anybody'd mind. It sounds like he comes highly reccommended-- If they auctioned him on eBay, I'd sure go broke.

I do declare I've got the vapors!

http://marcellas-montages.com/montage_site/images/celebrities/colin_farrell.jpg

So lovely

http://img71.photobucket.com/albums/v217/susibarc/roughday.jpg

Yum!

http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:sXpnWmwtImMJ:home.mtholyoke.edu/~cchristi/colin.3.jpg

Come on, Vogue!

http://www.sparkyandgizmo.com/ebay/colinv.jpg

What I wouldn't do to rub on those pajamas.

MROW!!!  http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v63/nikola1tesla/Advocate2004a.jpg

Interview with San Francisco's Angela Alioto

AA: Let me mention something about San Francisco schools.

AH: OK.

AA: I went out and saw the bathrooms of Balboa. When you have a child--I have four children and two grandchildren. Children have been my life. When you have a child that goes to school everyday and sees the circumstances of those bathrooms, they apply that to the rest of their life. In other words, why would they keep their room clean? Why would they even treat people nicely and not abuse them because they're being abused just by the squalor that exists in the bathrooms they have to use at schools in a city that is world-famous? It is emotionally and mentally so important that the school district do something about that because it has a lot to do with what they do when they're twelve and what they end up doing when they're eighteen and nineteen.It has a lot to do with it. And that people can't follow that connection--it's really problematic that adults can't see that when you have conditions like that bathroom at Balboa and then you have 18-year-olds who are members of gangs, you can't ask yourself why. You know why. You abused them and they felt it.


http://www.sfpolitics.com/html/interviews/transcripts/angelaalioto.cfm

Who ate my ballso??  http://www.haktanir.org/balls/

OK-- This post was a hoax-- It's a Richard Dreyfuss film with that guy from Bourne Identity-- The candidate there is not real-- I repeat: not real. And, FYI, articulacy is not a real word. Carry on.

--Errors and Omissions Editor

Honesty, Integrity, Articulacy..... http://www.dickiepilager.com/

On pirate day a few posts ago I wrote about Halloween in the Castro & making out with my homegirl Jinx while listening to bands in the street.  Now I can't get her or Halloween off my mind. 

Rubberdeeduckie is writing about spiders and dead squirrels, so that's getting me in the Halloween mood.  http://rubberdeeduckie.mindsay.com/

 I found an awesome post here from foreverknight about her experiences vising a haunted mental hospital.http://foreverknight.mindsay.com/

And I jumped on Pepito's blog www.pepitosmith.blogspot.com/ and was fondly reminiscing about his ass fucking ghosts-- Damn I miss him!  And I can't respond in comments now that those are down.  Blah!

So anyway... I'm trying to figure out what to do for Halloween this year if my ex-husband actually keeps his visitation with my sons that night.  I'm sick of working the Exotic Erotic, and this year the parking & crowds will be even worse since it's at the Cow Palace.  Going to the Castro or Power Exchange again is likely to get me into trouble right now, so I won't risk it.    Isn't there anything fun & exciting to do on Halloween night that doesn't invlove bars or drugs or bizarre group sex or overzealous church groups?    That link to Hell House scared the living shit out of me.

The kids really want to watch the Shining right now, after hearing so much about it at school, but honestly the thought of it is really creeping me out.  I saw that & Night of the Living Dead when I was about 4 or 5.  They gave me nightmares for years.  Would you show those to an 8 & 10 year old?

I spotted Gus at the Playboy Mansion last year partying his ass off with Paris Hilton, Hillary Duff, Lindsay Lohan, Brooke Burke, & a couple of gorgeous Thai twins from Bangkok.....

OK... Now that I have your attention..... Little help over here peeps?!

Gus has been kidnapped!!

Please help us rescue him.

We're putting out an APB everywhere.

Honestly, dude means a lot to me, & I can't sleep while he's AWOL.

The word of the day: "Legs." Let's go home & spread the word.

Quote from BGC's, Raspberry's, & Strawberry's blogs.....
REWARD OFFERED!!

Ah, sweet relief... Rocker's home http://rocker.blogs.com/

Here's his new post-hurricane entry: http://rocker.blogs.com/another_day_in_hell/2004/09/follow_through.html

Still on the lookout for Gus and that whale...but it's wonderful to read about Rocker's first love and first kiss once more, & find out what he's up to while I'm handing out Gus leaflets.

~+~O~+~O~+~O~+~O~+~O~+~O~+~O~+~O~+~O~+~O~+~O~+~O~+~O~+~O~+~O~+~O~+~O~+~O~+~O~+~ In response to Rocker's "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye" ..... My own first kiss was at 13 in 9th Grade-- in the hallway outside of orchestra class-- nervous, blushing, unsure, overly excited. I think both the boy and I were halfway scared we might get caught as if it were wrong, and get punished with detention or something. There was an extreme electrical storm that night, and I was thrilled as if it were a sure sign of otherworldy natural strength, the clouds discharging all the hormonal electricity coursing through my adolescent frame. At lunch the next day, this boy held me so impossibly tightly, and told me how he hid in fear all night, somehow terrified of those thunderbolts, shocked with the fear his house might blow up. It was strange first kiss. It was our only kiss, as after that I felt he was more like a brother or a son-- not ready yet to grow up, not ready yet to not have a comforting mother figure after his own had terrorized him badly. My first real make out session was years later-- I was 16. I had bicycled around the neighborhood and stopped to rest at my old elementary school, watching the soccer players race across the green fields with speed & strength like I'd never seen before. The was a tall player, dark skinned as if he were from India, chiseled, handsome-- strong & lithe, quick and focused. I watched him work in fascination, fighting relentlessly like a tiger, taking shot after shot toward the goal. I was in awe. As the rest of his teammates packed & left, he stayed & keot kicking that ball around-- pounding it solidly back toward the goal, then quickly teasing it around the field back into position for a solid thrust forward once more. Goota tell ya-- it got me so hot. I'd never seen anything quite like it in person. We got to talking, & though I can't remember exactly what was said, I remember how exited and appreciative his warm chocolate puppy dog eyes were when I told him I admired his skills. It was like he fell in love instantly. He was from Figi, it turns out, and was studying to be a mechanic. He said he'd seen me watching & had wanted to impress me, & was glad it worked, and he asked permission for kiss. I'd never had anyone ask me for a kiss before. He was so tall, but as he leaned down to meet my lips, his hands danced perfectly down my shoulders and slid behind me as he pulled me in closer. He was hot from running, and his mouth was so warm. We kissed for hours, til after the sun had gone down. Sadly-- my mother came looking for me in a panic, & she thought the man was trying to kidnap me or something-- since I should have been home before dark. He was barely 18 himself, but looked older as he was very tall with a mustache. She ran her car up on the curb and pinned us against the chicken wire fence. She screamed bloody murder at him, & I had to jump in & explin none of it was his fault-- it was my choice, and I hadn't realized it was dark yet. She said if she'd have had her gun, she'd have shot him dead on sight. He had such panic in his eyes!! I still feel so bad for him! She let him go, & dragged me back to let my father deal with me. Oh boy. Maybe it's time to reinact a first kiss in the safety of my own adulthood, so I can come up with a happier ending. ..................... I've dealt with so many OD's--mine & other peoples'--- GHB especially-- and watching all those other fucking incredibly young girls sticking meth needles in their necks, & having seizures, pigging out on cocaine & having their hearts act up, & having drunken blackouts-- that whole scene is rough and sad and wrong-- not too hard to stay clear of if you try. It's death brother. The last time I flew to LA, it was in February right after the kids I nannied for were taken into protective custody when their dad was arrested. It made me so detached from life here-- in pain-- no where really to go until my next apartment became available after the first of the month. I'd been clean for about a year & couldn't turn to drugs or drinking, so I flew to LA on a lark at the spur of the moment, wondering if any of my distant family might be around to hang with for a while until my new home was ready, trying to forget the pain of losing the kids I nannied for, of discovering the dark secrets of their family once their mom pressed charges against their dad. The plane I rode rose up above the island where my own sons slept, safe in the early morning sunshine at my ex-husband's house, and for a combination of reasons, I looked down at such a beautifully dazzling sunrise and burst into a river of tears, the habitual sequences of my mind completely torn apart.

Pacific Ocean -- No whales or ships or Gus's or Tortolans or Conchians in sight.....


 

"The Suspender" has a fantastic new post up-- an insider's look at photography among women in Saudi Arabia. 

Check it out!!

http://thesuspender.mindsay.com/

Pictures are worth a thousand words-- I'm touring around Mindsay enjoying all these photos & avatars-- and of course words too.

THIS---- IS LOVELY!!


http://ccstud.mindsay.com/

Mad cow for whales? Aquatic rabies? Is there a translator in the house?

 http://www.portodipescara.com/Chi%20siamo%20e%20cosa%20vogliamo.htm

Congratulations on the engagement Gus.  If she really loves you-- she'll help you get your whale.

http://blubberybastard.tripod.com/blog/

When's the bachelor/bachlorette parties?

Government Mischief &  The War on Some Drugs

http://www.tinotopia.com/log/archive/2001/03/12/the_war_on_some_drugs.htm

A lot of people in the U.S., myself included, are morally opposed to the U.S. government’s War on Drugs. As a method of keeping people from getting high — assuming for the moment that that’s a legitimate function of the government — it’s clearly a failure.

Only the most rabid pro-Drug War cheerleaders would maintain otherwise. Yet it continues.

Any attempt to approach the "problem" from another angle is quickly quashed by the government. The same people, Democrats and Republicans both, who crow about Less Government Spending and Less Interference In Your Life consistently approve of the government spending billions of dollars to lock people in prison. Less interference indeed.  The reason that none of this seems to make sense is that we persist in looking at it as a legitimate activity of the government; it’s not. It’s a business.

Allow me to (apparently) digress for a moment: if you live in the United States and own a television, you’ve undoubtedly seen advertisements on late-night TV for things like the Tap Light. The Tap Light is a cheaply-made battery-operated light; it’s electrically identical to a flashlight, but it takes the shape of a little dome of light-diffusing plastic. You put it on a shelf or table, and by tapping the dome (which is also the switch), you turn the light on and off. There is no demonstrable need for this awful little thing. It’s very poorly-designed, expensive to operate, not very effective (you can’t easily read by its light, for instance), and ugly. Despite all this, the Tap Light Corporation continues to sell the thing. Its total effect is very small, but the Tap Light is definitely harmful to society. Because the Tap Light Corporation is making money on the it, though, they’re going to continue to sell it. They should do no less.

So why are we surprised that the Drug War continues? On a regular basis, the California Correctional Peace Officers’ Association — the prison guards’ union — lobbies against any measure in California that would reduce the number of prison admissions. Police departments push for greater powers to seize property of people accused of drug crimes. Other agencies of the government save money by, for instance, denying federal aid to would-be students who have been convicted of any drug-related crimes. If you don’t believe me, read this article from the Seattle Times about an attempt in Washington to require that people actually be convicted before their property is seized by the government.

https://secure.nwsource.com/reg/scr/signin.cfm?target=http%3A%2F%2Farchives%2Eseattletimes%2Enwsource%2Ecom%2Fcgi%2Dbin%2Ftexis%2Ecgi%2Fweb%2Fvortex%2Fdisplay%3Fslug%3Dseize08m%26date%3D20010208

In part, it says: And the money has become essential for police departments trying to stay on top of rising drug crimes while dealing with tighter budgets. "That’d put us out of business," said Tacoma police spokesman Jim Mattheis. There you have it in a nutshell. I believe that this is an adequate explanation for a lot of the drug hysteria in the U.S. (which the U.S. then imposes on large parts of the rest of the world): that the government needs another source of revenue. Whether this source of revenue would be necessary were the government not spending so much on the drug war is a question I will leave unexamined for the time being. In any case, this is the only explanation I’ve been able to think of that fits the circumstances. If you look at the government’s actions not as any attempt to arrive at some kind of justice, but rather as the actions of a business with something to sell — police and incarceration services, in this case — the Drug War makes prefect sense. The fact that the Drug War does nothing to stop drugs is irrelevant; the means is the end. We will not see any meaningful reform of the insane drug laws in this country until no agency of government directly benefits from them.

Haiti. 1500 dead 900 missing.


http://www.ifrc.org/helpnow/donate/donate_response.asp

Red Cross

This secret code thing has been bugging the bejeezus out of me for a while, and I don't know what to make of it.

Why is it, that on any given day, if you hear one highly unusual word one time, like "resilient" or "purple parakeet," or "tesseract," you're bound to hear that same highly unusual word or combination of words like 10 times again on the same day or in the same week in four or five places, from TV, to current news events as they are happening, to political speeches, to sales ads?

And then as quickly as it comes-- the trend shifts to something else, as if everyone's suddenly finished with that weird word or obscure phrase, and you rarely or never hear it again in popular use?  What's it all about? 

 Is it some kind of undercover CIA mafioso fraternity monkey-see-monkey-do copy-cat marketing strategy, or popular psychology disinformation, or gangland magical parlor trick against the weak minded and highly impressionable?  Or is something horribly sinister and possibly mildly intriguing afoot?  Half the time I think any one of these is a fair appraisal. Maybe I'm just bored & I'm imagining things.  What gives? 

If you drew up a calendar with these bizarro word coincidences-- it's almost as if you can take that and predict what words are about to pop up in tomorrow's blogs, in the headlines, and on movie tickets.  You can almost take the words right out of the mouths of reporters and politicians before news happens-- at least the weird words they choose to describe events as they're happening-- the words and odd phrases that stick out as suddenly noticable because.... well because you've already heard those particular rare words and phrases in tandem over and over again that same day out of the blue.  It's fucking eerie, like a cloud of subtle combinations you might understand if only you had the right special 3-D glasses or translation key,  and it's driving me nuts.  Anybody have a clue?  Is it one of those things you can only learn by direct example and practice...but "Shhh! Somebody shut that woman up!" if you ask about it out loud?  

Where exactly is genuine enlightenment on this & not some more side-stepping B.S?  Is that the essence of this particular Jedi-mind trick?  What's it for?  Why do people do it?  Where does it come from?  I'd love it if anyone could please help point me in the right direction. 

Now were getting somewhere!!  Where?  I'm not sure....  Somewhere else?

This is in reponse to makenzero's super hints in comments in the previous post.....  THANX!  <@ ; )

http://www.cnn.com/2000/books/news/12/01/poe.ap/

Edgar Allan Poe puzzle decoded

December 1, 2000
Web posted at: 10:01 AM EST (1501 GMT)

WILLIAMSTOWN, Massachusetts (AP) -- Edgar Allan Poe, master of the mysterious and the macabre, may have uttered his last words from beyond the grave.

A coded message published by Poe in 1841 has been deciphered with the help of modern computing and the intuition of a young puzzle solver, 151 years after Poe's death.

Below are the decoded texts of two secret messages published in 1841 by Poe: "The soul secure in her existence smiles at the drawn dagger and defies its point. The stars shall fade away, the sun himself grow dim with age and nature sink in years, but thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, unhurt amid the war of elements, the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds." -- Identified as an excerpt from 1713 play "Cato" by English writer Joseph Addison. "It was early spring, warm and sultry glowed the afternoon. The very breezes seemed to share the delicious langour of universal nature, are laden the various and mingled perfumes of the rose and the jessamine, the woodbine and its wildflower. They slowly wafted their fragrant offering to the open window where sat the lovers. The ardent sun shoot fell upon her blushing face and its gentle beauty was more like the creation of romance or the fair inspiration of a dream than the actual reality on earth. Tenderly her lover gazed upon her as the clusterous ringlets were edged by amorous and sportive zephyrs and when he perceived the rude intrusion of the sunlight he sprang to draw the curtain but softly she stayed him. "No, no, dear Charles," she softly said, "much rather yould I have a little sun than no air at all." -- Origin unknown

But the translated passage wasn't Poe's message for readers yet unborn or a key to his enigmatic stories. In fact, the passage is so inept and sentimental he probably didn't write it all. But whether he selected and encoded the passage remains a mystery.

It was one of two encoded texts that Poe presented as the work of a "Mr. W.B. Tyler," challenging readers to break their codes. No one did until scholars began embracing the theory that Poe himself came up with the messages and devised the codes.

The theory holds that Poe, obsessed with death and premature burial in "The Tell-tale Heart" and other stories, would have encrypted his own words in a nearly impenetrable code meant to be pried open only long after his death.

In 1992, Duke University doctoral student Terence Whalen, while procrastinating on his dissertation, finally decoded the first message. It was a passage from the 1713 play "Cato" by English writer Joseph Addison.

But it took a special computer program and more time to fathom the second. "I can't really say if I cared what it would say, one way or the other. But I was curious to see what it would yield," said Gil Broza, the 27-year-old computer programmer from Toronto who cracked the code.

For his solution, he was awarded $2,500 by Williams College in Massachusetts. Shawn Rosenheim, a Poe scholar at the college, established the contest in 1996. The second deciphered message is a treacly passage wholly unlike Poe's work, with references to sultry breezes, amorous zephyrs and delicious languor.

"I can't imagine Poe would have taken the trouble to construct an elaborate cryptogram to disguise something this banal," said J. Gerald Kennedy, a Poe expert at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

On the other hand, Poe was a prankster who used to write anonymous reviews of his own work, accusing himself of plagiarism. Some believe Poe chose the name Tyler to tweak President John Tyler, whose administration had passed over the chronically broke Poe for a job.

In the end, the solved texts do touch on themes that preoccupied Poe, like immortality and enclosure, but neither appears to be the coveted message to posterity. They don't even indicate definitively if Poe encoded them.

"I spent years of my life on this," Rosenheim said this week. "But I might be wrong."

Copyright 2000 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

From Amazon.com

213 of 542 people found the following review helpful: From the Author to the Some of the Negative Voices Here, September 6, 2004 Reviewer: Anne Obrien Rice (New Orleans, LA United States) - See all my reviews    Seldom do I really answer those who criticize my work. In fact, the entire development of my career has been fueled by my ability to ignore denigrating and trivializing criticism as I realize my dreams and my goals. However there is something compelling about Amazon's willingness to publish just about anything, and the sheer outrageous stupidity of many things you've said here that actually touches my proletarian and Democratic soul. Also I use and enjoy Amazon and I do read the reviews of other people's books in many fields. In sum, I believe in what happens here. And so, I speak. First off, let me say that this is addressed only to some of you, who have posted outrageously negative comments here, and not to all. You are interrogating this text from the wrong perspective. Indeed, you aren't even reading it. You are projecting your own limitations on it. And you are giving a whole new meaning to the words "wide readership." And you have strained my Dickensean principles to the max. I'm justifiably proud of being read by intellectual giants and waitresses in trailer parks,in fact, I love it, but who in the world are you? Now to the book. Allow me to point out: nowhere in this text are you told that this is the last of the chronicles, nowhere are you promised curtain calls or a finale, nowhere are you told there will be a wrap-up of all the earlier material. The text tells you exactly what to expect. And it warns you specifically that if you did not enjoy Memnoch the Devil, you may not enjoy this book. This book is by and about a hero whom many of you have already rejected. And he tells you that you are likely to reject him again. And this book is most certainly written -- every word of it -- by me. If and when I can't write a book on my own, you'll know about it. And no, I have no intention of allowing any editor ever to distort, cut, or otherwise mutilate sentences that I have edited and re-edited, and organized and polished myself. I fought a great battle to achieve a status where I did not have to put up with editors making demands on me, and I will never relinquish that status. For me, novel writing is a virtuoso performance. It is not a collaborative art. Back to the novel itself: the character who tells the tale is my Lestat. I was with him more closely than I have ever been in this novel; his voice was as powerful for me as I've ever heard it. I experienced break through after break through as I walked with him, moved with him, saw through his eyes. What I ask of Lestat, Lestat unfailingly gives. For me, three hunting scenes, two which take place in hotels -- the lone woman waiting for the hit man, the slaughter at the pimp's party -- and the late night foray into the slums --stand with any similar scenes in all of the chronicles. They can be read aloud without a single hitch. Every word is in perfect place. The short chapter in which Lestat describes his love for Rowan Mayfair was for me a totally realized poem. There are other such scenes in this book. You don't get all this? Fine. But I experienced an intimacy with the character in those scenes that shattered all prior restraints, and when one is writing one does have to continuously and courageously fight a destructive tendency to inhibition and restraint. Getting really close to the subject matter is the achievement of only great art. Now, if it doesn't appeal to you, fine. You don't enjoy it? Read somebody else. But your stupid arrogant assumptions about me and what I am doing are slander. And you have used this site as if it were a public urinal to publish falsehood and lies. I'll never challenge your democratic freedom to do so, and yes, I'm answering you, but for what it's worth, be assured of the utter contempt I feel for you, especially those of you who post anonymously (and perhaps repeatedly?) and how glad I am that this book is the last one in a series that has invited your hateful and ugly responses. Now, to return to the narrative in question: Lestat's wanting to be a saint is a vision larded through and through with his characteristic vanity. It connects perfectly with his earlier ambitions to be an actor in Paris, a rock star in the modern age. If you can't see that, you aren't reading my work. In his conversation with the Pope he makes observations on the times which are in continuity with his observations on the late twentieth century in The Vampire Lestat, and in continuity with Marius' observations in that book and later in Queen of the Damned. The state of the world has always been an important theme in the chronicles. Lestat's comments matter. Every word he speaks is part of the achievement of this book. That Lestat renounced this saintly ambition within a matter of pages is plain enough for you to see. That he reverts to his old self is obvious, and that he intends to complete the tale of Blackwood Farm is also quite clear. There are many other themes and patterns in this work that I might mention -- the interplay between St.Juan Diago and Lestat, the invisible creature who doesn't "exist" in the eyes of the world is a case in point. There is also the theme of the snare of Blackwood Farm, the place where a human existence becomes so beguiling that Lestat relinquishes his power as if to a spell. The entire relationship between Lestat and Uncle Julien is carefully worked out. But I leave it to readers to discover how this complex and intricate novel establishes itself within a unique, if not unrivalled series of book. There are things to be said. And there is pleasure to be had. And readers will say wonderful things about Blood Canticle and they already are. There are readers out there and plenty of them who cherish the individuality of each of the chronicles which you so flippantly condemn. They can and do talk circles around you. And I am warmed by their response. Their letters, the papers they write in school, our face to face exchanges on the road -- these things sustain me when I read the utter trash that you post. But I feel I have said enough. If this reaches one reader who is curious about my work and shocked by the ugly reviews here, I've served my goals. And Yo, you dude, the slang police! Lestat talks like I do. He always has and he always will. You really wouldn't much like being around either one of us. And you don't have to be. If any of you want to say anything about all this by all means Email me at Anneobrienrice@mac.com. And if you want your money back for the book, send it to 1239 First Street, New Orleans, La, 70130. I'm not a coward about my real name or where I live. And yes, the Chronicles are no more! Thank God! Was this review helpful to you?

When I was a a little girl, I drove my parents bananas playing the theme from Chariots of Fire.  I LOVED that song.  I played that gorgeous song endlessly, until the piano patterns became a living & flawless part of my fingers' indelible muscle memory.  I felt I held ancient magic in my hands, and was thrilled with the dangerous majesty of that feeling, the primal throbbing sound of an old and wonderous age.  That tune haunted my days and my dreams, and was the inspirational backdrop for so many of my childhood adventures.  It gave me my first young love for music, and fired my drive to pursue it.

Vangelis is at it again...... with ALEXANDER!  Click below to hear it online

What a trip to hear THIS!!!   I LOVE IT!!!

Join the Vangelis mailing list to stay up-to-date on all the latest news! ALEXANDER Soundtrack composed by Vangelis in stores November 9, 2004! Listen to a 4 minute clip from the ALEXANDER Soundtrack here! RealAudio | QuickTime | Windows Media: lo - hi Oscar-winning Greek composer Vangelis is creating the original score for Oliver Stone's Alexander, an epic retelling of the story of the legendary Greek conqueror-hero Alexander the Great, with Colin Farrell in the title role. An Intermedia film in association with IMF with a cast that includes Academy Award winners Angelina Jolie and Sir Anthony Hopkins as well as Val Kilmer, Jared Leto, Rosario Dawson and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Alexander opens nationwide from Warner Bros. on Wednesday, November 24, 2004. Sony Classical will release the film's original soundtrack recording on Tuesday, November 9, 2004. Vangelis has created a musical setting that captures both the epic scale and the human drama of this spectacular film, which is both written and directed by multiple Oscar winner Oliver Stone (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK). "I've always admired Oliver's films," Vangelis says, "and, of course, Alexander the Great is a story that's a natural part of my heritage. So, to be composing for this film, with Oliver Stone directing, makes it an especially exciting experience for me." Alexander is based on the true story of one of history's most luminous and influential leaders (Colin Farrell) - a man who had conquered 90% of the known world by the age of 25. Alexander led his virtually invincible armies through 22,000 miles of sieges and conquests in just eight years, and by the time of his death at the age of 32 had forged an empire unlike any the world had ever seen. The film takes a bold, honest look at Alexander's life and his relationships with his mother, Olympias (Angelina Jolie), his father Philip (Val Kilmer), his lifelong friend and battle commander Hephaistion (Jared Leto), Roxane, his ambitious and beautiful Persian wife (Rosario Dawson), and his trusted general and confidant Ptolemy (played at different ages by Anthony Hopkins and Elliot Cowan). Set in Alexander's pre-Christian world of social customs and morals far different from today's, the film explores a time of unmatched beauty and unbelievable brutality, of soaring ideals and staggering betrayals. Vangelis's music for the 1981 film Chariots of Fire is one of the most influential - and widely "quoted" - film scores of modern times, winning an Oscar for Best Original Score. Since that worldwide success, his scores for the films Blade Runner, Missing, The Bounty and 1492- Conquest of Paradise have become enduring international cult favorites, along with his many concept albums and other musical projects. Most recently, Vangelis created the 2002 FIFA World Cup Anthem, which won the International Song of the Year Award from the Recording Industry Association of Japan. In 2001, Vangelis collaborated with Sony Classical on an epic multimedia project entitled Mythodea, built around his music, which was used by NASA to celebrate its Mars Odyssey mission. Vangelis himself performed the score live in Athens in a concert that also featured singers Kathleen Battle and Jessye Norman. In addition to an audio recording of the music, a dramatic film of the concert is available on home video by Sony Classical.

VANGELIS MAILING LIST Email address: Email format: HTML (with pictures)TEXT (no pictures) First Name: Gender: SelectFemaleMale Country AlbaniaAlgeriaAmerican SamoaAndorraAngolaAnguillaAntarcticaAntigua And BarbudaArgentinaArmeniaArubaAustraliaAustriaAzerbaijanBahamasBahrainBangladeshBarbadosBelarusBelgiumBelizeBeninBermudaBhutanBoliviaBosnia and HerzegowinaBotswanaBouvet IslandBrazilBrunei DarussalamBulgariaBurkina FasoBurmaBurundiCambodiaCameroonCanadaCape VerdeCayman IslandsCentral African RepublicChadChileChinaChristmas IslandCocos (Keeling) IslandsColombiaComorosCongoCook IslandsCosta RicaCote d'IvoireCroatiaCyprusCzech RepublicDenmarkDjiboutiDominicaDominican RepublicEast TimorEcuadorEgyptEl SalvadorEnglandEquatorial GuineaEritreaEspanaEstoniaEthiopiaFalkland IslandsFaroe IslandsFijiFinlandFranceFrench GuianaFrench PolynesiaGabonGambiaGeorgiaGermanyGhanaGibraltarGreat BritainGreeceGreenlandGrenadaGuadeloupeGuamGuatemalaGuineaGuinea-BissauGuyanaHaitiHondurasHong KongHungaryIcelandIndiaIndonesiaIrelandIsraelItalyJamaicaJapanJordanKazakhstanKenyaKiribatiKorea (South)Korea, Republic ofKuwaitKyrgyzstanLatviaLebanonLesothoLiberiaLiechtensteinLithuaniaLuxembourgMacauMacedoniaMadagascarMalawiMalaysiaMaldivesMaliMaltaMarshall IslandsMartiniqueMauritaniaMauritiusMayotteMexicoMoldova, Republic ofMonacoMongoliaMontserratMoroccoMozambiqueMyanmarNamibiaNauruNepalNetherlandsNetherlands AntillesNew CaledoniaNew ZealandNicaraguaNigerNigeriaNiueNorfolk IslandNorthern IrelandNorwayOmanPakistanPalauPanamaPapua New GuineaParaguayPeruPhilippinesPitcairnPolandPortugalPuerto RicoQatarReunionRomaniaRussiaRussian FederationRwandaSaint Kitts and NevisSaint LuciaSamoa (Independent)San MarinoSao Tome and PrincipeSaudi ArabiaScotlandSenegalSeychellesSierra LeoneSingaporeSlovakiaSloveniaSolomon IslandsSomaliaSouth AfricaSouth KoreaSpainSri LankaSt. HelenaSt. Pierre and MiquelonSurinameSwazilandSwedenSwitzerlandTaiwanTajikistanTanzaniaThailandTogoTokelauTongaTrinidadTrinidad and TobagoTunisiaTurkeyTurkmenistanTurks and Caicos IslandsTuvaluUgandaUkraineUnited Arab EmiratesUnited KingdomUruguayUSAUzbekistanVanuatuVatican City StateVenezuelaViet NamVirgin Islands (British)Virgin Islands (U.S.)WalesWestern SaharaYemenZambiaZimbabweOther ZIP/Postal code: Please send me information on other Sony Classical artists. Please send me information on other Sony Music Soundtrax. http://www.alexandersoundtrack.com/

http://www.elsew.com/data/latest.htm

Period.

One in Ten.

Weak.

Volcano.

Sewer.

S.H.I.T!

What's the fucking connection?

Anyway....

brightstuff.mindsay.com just posted an absolutely outstanding referral to THIS:

http://www.ftssoldier.blogspot.com/

QUOTE:

BlogThis!

Fight To Survive

This site is the mouthpiece for a group of soldiers who are fighting in a war they oppose for a president they didn't elect while the petrochemical complex turns the blood of their fallen comrades into oil

BlogThis!

 FREE EDDIE RAPOZA!

Imagine waking up after a horrific accident with a broken hip and a broken neck, being informed your entire family is dead and that you killed them by crashing your wife's brand new Dodge Caravan minivan, and being told by investigators (while you are under the influence of fentanyl and other strong hospitals narcotics & anesthetics) that they want you to confess to murder as if you'd done it on purpose.  Imagine wanting to die at a moment like that, being in a stupor of pain and shock and agony, hallucinating under heavy sedatives, saying yes to anything and everything in despair and confusion.  Imagine then being locked up for 2 years awaiting trial, and discovering that while you were locked up, accidents similar to yours are occuring for others who also have adjustable pedels,  which can trap your foot under the brake once the gas is depressed.  Ford recalled those pedals.  It's time for Dodge to as well.  Eddie needs help.

Witness will be taped for trial of accused family killer

A defense witness for Eddie Rapoza, the man accused of driving his family off a Moss Beach cliff, will have his testimony taped before being deported to England, a judge ruled Friday.

Rapoza, 36, of Foster City, is facing three murder charges for killing his 4-year-old daughter and his pregnant wife. His trial is set to begin Nov. 1.

Rapoza has been in custody since October 2002, when he was charged with the murder of his pregnant wife and 4-year-old daughter. While hospitalized for injuries suffered in the crash that killed his family, Rapoza confessed to purposely driving the family’s minivan off a Moss Beach cliff. He has since recanted, blaming the confession on strong psychiatric pain killers. He now maintains his innocence.

Rapoza is facing life in prison without parole if convicted of the three murders.

Eddie Rapoza claims the Oct. 6, 2002 crash was accidental, caused by his foot becoming stuck on the accelerator. Prosecutors counter that it was a botched murder-suicide attempt fueled by Rapoza’s jealousy. The 150-foot plunge killed Raye Rapoza, 24, and her fetus. Tehani Rapoza, 4, was taken off life support days later.

http://www.smdailyjournal.org/article.cfm?issue=09-20-04&storyID=34928

nikola1tesla@aol.com (RestInParadise) wrote in message news:...

> A crucial cause of homelessness is the gross negligence of legal > representatives for the poor, lawyers who fail to investigate their > clients cases for innocence while their remaining families struggle > and starve alone. > >

Case in point: > > http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=eddie%20rapoza

> > Even after a year innocent Eddie Rapoza still sits in Maguire jail in > San Mateo County, after his "foot stuck" on the gas pedal causing his > minivan to barrel over a cliff into the Pacific in Moss Beach, killing > his family and severely injuring himself. Prosecutors and police > laughed at the thought that anyone's foot could just "stick" to a gas > pedal, claiming that is impossible. They charged him with > intentionally murdering his pregnant wife, unborn child, and four year > old daughter. They are trying to look "tough on domestic violence" by > considering the death penalty in his case. > > They failed AND STILL IGNORE the adjustable pedals Eddie's wife moved > higher to accomodate her 7 month pregnant midriff. They ignore that > such pedals were recalled by other makers like Ford in 2002 for > causing feet to catch between brake and gas. They choose the > capitalize in a similar Scott and Laci Peterson case about a pregnant > woman "murdered," and are unfairly trying to look tougher on domestic > violence after complaints that San Mateo County was too weak. > > San Mateo has no "public defender," opting instead for a cheaper > "private defender" program where busy private lawyers take a much > smaller payment to do cut rate work without investigating fully. What > saves the county a little bit of money unfairly ruins innocent > families and devestates entire communities, like East Palo Alto. > > If Eddie's busy court appointed lawyer had bothered to invetigate AT > ALL, his lawyer would have discovered that Eddie's 7 month pregnant > wife's minivan, a 2002 Dodge Caravan, was the first of it's kind to be > equipped with "adjustable pedals," which she could move up to three > inches closer to her so that she could still reach them. A short lady, > she HAD to move the seat back and the pedals up to fit behind the > wheel at 7 months pregant. Eddie never knew to move the pedals back to > where his foor could not hook beneath the unusually high brake pedal > after depressing the gas. He didn't understand at the time why his > foot was trapped, and no one believed him. Since then, other car 2002 > manufacturers like Ford had a recall over this very thing. But nobody > is helping Eddie. Please somebody help. > > Eddie has unsuccessfully petitioned to remove his lawyer twice. His > court appointed lawyer is a very busy official with the local bar > association, too busy to answer calls or visit Eddie more than once > for a YEAR. A woman on his defense team claims that Eddie can't > possibly be smart enough to understand the law, so they won't bother > trying to explain it to him. Eddie has his GED and reads and writes > very well. He understands they want him to take a deal for life in > prison in lieu of the death penalty, though he lost his family in a > truly horrific accident they ridiculously call murder. > > San Mateo's DA has a 97% conviction rate. NO county could possibly > have a conviction rate THAT high if the court appointed private > defenders were doing their investigations and their jobs right for the > poor. > > Please somebody help him. There are many like him. > > http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=eddie%20rapoza > >

 

Archives - Advanced Search Rapoza likely to cite faulty brake pedal in accident By Jim Welte--Half Moon Bay Review Nearly 15 months after he allegedly drove a van carrying his pregnant wife and four-year-old daughter off a cliff at the end of Bernal Avenue in Moss Beach, killing them both, the upcoming jury trial of Eddie Rapoza is beginning to take shape. He will appear in court Feb. 20 for a judge to set a trial date. Rapoza, 36, has already pleaded innocent to three counts of first-degree murder in the October 2002 fatal plunge that killed his daughter Tehani, his 34-year-old wife Raye Lynn and the seven-month-old fetus his wife was carrying. Meanwhile, the San Mateo County District Attorney's office has portrayed him as a jealous and possibly suicidal husband who sought to end his life and those of his family members. The prosecution has also indicated that Rapoza admitted to using both marijuana and methamphetamines on the day before the tragic crash, according to police affidavits, and had a short history of erratic behavior, including threatening to kill himself in April 2002. The DA's office has hinted that it could seek the death penalty in the case. But supporters of the Foster City resident, who has been in custody with a no-bail status since the crash, have urged his court-appointed defense attorneys, Jeff Boyarski and Connie O'Brien, to cite mechanical failure as the cause of the crash. According to an e-mail sent to media organizations by Rapoza supporters, his family's blue 2002 Dodge van was equipped with adjustable brake and gas pedals that allowed Raye Lynn Rapoza to reach them during her pregnancy. The e-mail claimed that the pedals had been moved as much as three inches closer to the driver, and that Eddie Rapoza did not know to move the pedals back, causing his right foot to become lodged underneath the brake pedal and on top of the gas. Ford Motor Co. recalled those modified pedals, according to the e-mail. Both legal teams are reportedly looking into the claim by seeking records from the automobile giant and also by reconstructing the accident. Both Sheriff's reports and witness accounts indicated that there were no skid marks in the area of Bernal and Ocean avenues, as well as no mechanical failure of the van, causing them to determine that the crash was a deliberate act. Rapoza sustained leg and hip injuries in the crash, from which he's recovered. Raye Lynn Rapoza was killed instantly in the plunge, while Tehani suffered massive head trauma and was pronounced brain dead upon her arrival by helicopter at Lucille Packard Children's Hospital. She died from those injuries the next morning. In October 2003 Rapoza made an attempt to get new lawyers, saying the court-appointed private defenders "haven't been performing nothing for me." The court denied the request, but later granted the defense's "Pitchess motion," which will allow defense attorneys to get access to the personnel files of the two county Sheriff's detectives who interrogated Rapoza after his arrest. The defense team will subpoena the personnel records for detectives Joseph Farmer and Gary Ramos, who testified at a preliminary hearing in early 2003 that Rapoza said his foot had stuck to the gas pedal the day of the crash. The "Pitchess motion" allows defense attorneys to look for complaints or allegations of misconduct in the officers' backgrounds.

Copyright © 2004Half Moon Bay Review and Pescadero Pebble.

Unfinished business.....What rhymes with volcano & sewer?  I'm sure there must be a place for those somewhere...

These nightmares infesting my brain with a siccness

I ain't splattering guts on the pavement so witnesses

Testify claiming that sins of omission

Are any part of my eternal soul's vision

Predict infidelity, weakness or shame

There's nobody else deep as me up in the game

Started before most ya'll even been born

The sins of my father blow Gabriel's horn

Not angel nor devil cuz it all comes to pain

When broken to elements one and the same

All fibers and filaments ground into dust

Rebuilding this empire up from the rust

And ashes from cycles of wars never ending

These nuclear particles splitting then mending

My thermodynamic verbosity flaming

Blowing through hurricanes well beyond naming

The fabric of life partly real part a shadow

I still live MY life with or without your battle.

Iam coming up roses Iam coming up steel

Pressed coal into diamonds still rough to the feel

I been through the swastikas, been through your noose

I been down your chimneys and out your caboose

Medieval reactors brand chemical burns

Indelible engrams eat diets of worms

Canonical lyrics bring darkness to light

You monks and you druids can't bait me to fight

With broadcasted psychospeak lethal as pistols

Transmissions revolving through radio crystals

The woof, wave, and warp of the weave of my conciense

Has nothing to do with your static long gone since

That shaking and quakin quit testing my nerves

Got bored with that drama, there's no point it serves

Ain't nothing I can't face ain't nothing not done

If you think you'll find better you can't be my one

Got wolves howling nightly and sharks cutting teeth

Got enemies hiding from what lies beneath

That splinter cell fingerprints too much to bear

Like DNA evidence sprung from nowhere

Got nothing to gain here cuz nothing's for sale

I ain't got no business in telling this tale

I'm up late at night thinking bout days long past

And talking myself out of whipping some ass

Cuz the lessons I've learned are what still prolly saves me

And I thank all my homies who took time to raise me

Yaaaaayyyyy!!!! Pepito's BACK!!!!

QUOTE: Cool facts:

"Now you can find me from anywhere all over the internet by typing pepitosmith in your web browser and hitting Ctrl + Enter..."

*Sigh* *Meow* *Purr*

www.pepitosmith.blogspot.com

ROWR!!

OH! MY!! GOD!!!!

http://comingsoon.net/news/topnews.php?id=6582

I'm too damn lazy to write my own blog tonight.  I've been on the phone scheduling flights, hotels, etc. etc. etc...and my imaginary mental muse is wandering around the backyard of my brain right now attempting to collect reasons for this particular head trip I'm taking toward my roots, as if being in closer proximity to the bones of my ancestors might help me understand myself differently, get rid of the fear of unbelonging.  In other words-- I got a hook up on the East Coast to go party with a hot 23 yer old girl & pick up guys together in a secluded resort town as if it were Spring Break.  Who cares that's where my father's families from?  Do I need an excuse to get out of town?    Do I need to justify myself to you?  No..  No..  No...  I don't.  Why is it I have to pin an ulterior motive on myself & create an alibi just to have a fucking good time once in a while?    Man... I been doing this way too long.  I can't do simple.

In other news today...  Remember MOBY???

Check dude out!!

http://www.moby.com/index2.html

Report ......New York City

Today,  Kerry and Edwards received the endorsement of GW Bushs Crawford, Texas hometown newspaper, The Lone Star Iconoclast. The editor, Mr. Leon Smith, is also the publisher of the Clifton Record which endorsed George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in 2000.  

2004 Iconoclast Presidential Endorsement

Few Americans would have voted for George W. Bush four years ago if he had promised that, as President, he would:

-Empty the Social Security trust fund by $507 billion to help offset fiscal irresponsibility and at the same time slash Social Security benefits.

-Cut Medicare by 17 percent and reduce veterans benefits and military pay.  

-Eliminate overtime pay for millions of Americans and raise oil prices by 50 percent.

-Give tax cuts to businesses that sent American jobs overseas, and, in fact, by policy encourage their departure.

-Give away billions of tax dollars in government contracts without competitive bids.

- Involve this country in a deadly and highly questionable war, and

- Take a budget surplus and turn it into the worst deficit in the history of the United States, creating a debt in just four years that will take generations to repay.

These were elements of an agenda that surfaced only after he took office.  The publishers of THE ICONOCLAST endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda.  Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry, based not only on the things that Bush has delivered, but also on the vision of a return to normality that Kerry says our country needs. Four items trouble us the most about the Bush administration: his initiatives to disable the Social Security system, the deteriorating state of the American economy, a dangerous shift away from the basic freedoms established by our founding fathers, and his continuous mistakes regarding terrorism and Iraq.

President Bush has announced plans to change the Social Security system as we know it by privatizing it, which when considering all the tangents related to such a change, would put the entire economy in a dramatic tailspin.  

The Social Security Trust Fund actually lends money to the rest of the government in exchange for government bonds, which is how the system must work by law, but how do you later repay Social Security while you are running a huge deficit? Its impossible, without raising taxes sometime in the future or becoming fiscally responsible now. Social Security money is being used to escalate our deficit  and, at the same time, mask a much larger government deficit, instead of paying down the national debt, which would be a proper use, to guarantee a future gain.

Privatization is problematic in that it would subject Social Security to the ups, downs, and outright crashes of the Stock Market. It would take millions in brokerage fees and commissions out of the system, and, unless we have assurance that the Ivan Boeskys and Ken Lays of the world will be caught and punished as a deterrent, subject both the Market and the Social Security Fund to fraud and market manipulation, not to mention devastate and ruin multitudes of American families that would find their lives lost to starvation, shame, and isolation.  

Kerry wants to keep Social Security, which each of us already owns. He says that the program is manageable, since it is projected to be solvent through 2042, with use of its trust funds. This would give ample time to strengthen the economy, reduce the budget deficit the Bush administration has created, and, therefore, bolster the program as needed to fit ever changing demographics.

Our senior citizens depend upon Social Security. Bushs answer is radical and uncalled for, and would result in chaos as Americans have never experienced. 
Do we really want to risk the future of Social Security on Bush by spinning the wheel of uncertainty?
In those dark hours after the World Trade Center attacks, Americans rallied together with a new sense of patriotism. We were ready to follow Bushs lead through any travail.

He let us down.

When he finally emerged from his hide-outs on remote military bases well after the first crucial hours following the attack, he gave sound-bytes instead of solutions.

He did not trust us to be ready to sacrifice, build up our public and private security infrastructure, or cut down on our energy use to put economic pressure on the enemy in all the nations where he hides.  

He merely told us to shop, spend, and pretend nothing was wrong.

Rather than using the billions of dollars expended on the invasion of Iraq to shore up our boundaries and go after Osama bin Laden and the Saudi Arabian terrorists, the funds were used to initiate a war with what Bush called a more immediate menace, Saddam Hussein, in oil-rich Iraq. After all, Bush said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction trained on America. We believed him, just as we believed it when he reported that Iraq was the heart of terrorism.  We trusted him.

THE ICONOCLAST, the Presidents hometown newspaper, took Bush on his word and editorialized in favor of the invasion. The newspapers publisher promoted Bush and the invasion of Iraq to Londoners in a BBC interview during the time that the administration was wooing the support of Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Again, he let us down.

We presumed the President had solid proof of the existence of these weapons, what and where they were, even as the search continued. Otherwise, our troops would be in much greater danger and the premise for a hurried-up invasion would be moot, allowing more time to solicit assistance from our allies.

Instead we were duped into following yet another privileged agenda.

Now he argues unconvincingly that Iraq was providing safe harbor to terrorists, his new key justification for the invasion. It is like arguing that America provided safe harbor to terrorists leading to 9 /11.

Once and for all, George Bush was President of the United States on that day. No one else.  He had been President nine months, he had been officially warned of just such an attack a full month before it happened.  As President, ultimately he and only he was responsible for our failure to avert those attacks.

We should expect that a sitting President would vacation less, if at all, and instead tend to the business of running the country, especially if he is, as he likes to boast, a wartime president.

America is in service 365 days a year. We dont need a part-time President who does not show up for duty as Commander-In-Chief until he is forced to, and who is in a constant state of blameless denial when things dont get done.

What has evolved from the virtual go-it-alone conquest of Iraq is more gruesome than a stain on a White House interns dress. Americas reputation and influence in the world has diminished, leaving us with brute force as our most persuasive voice.

Iraq is now a quagmire: no WMDs, no substantive link between Saddam and Osama, and no workable plan for the withdrawal of our troops. We are asked to go along on faith. But remember, blind patriotism can be a dangerous thing and spin will not bring back to life a dead soldier; certainly not a thousand of them.

Kerry has remained true to his vote granting the President the authority to use the threat of war to intimidate Saddam Hussein into allowing weapons inspections.  He believes President Bush rushed into war before the inspectors finished their jobs.

Kerry also voted against President Bushs $87 billion for troop funding because the bill promoted poor policy in Iraq, privileged Halliburton and other corporate friends of the Bush administration to profiteer from the war, and forced debt upon future generations of Americans.

Kerrys four-point plan for Iraq is realistic, wise, strong, and correct. With the help from our European and Middle Eastern allies, his plan is to train Iraqi security forces, involve Iraqis in their rebuilding and constitution-writing processes, forgive Iraqs multibillion dollar debts, and convene a regional conference with Iraqs neighbors in order to secure a pledge of respect for Iraqs borders and non-interference in Iraqs internal affairs.

The publishers of the ICONOCLAST differ with Bush on other issues, including the denial of stem cell research, shortchanging veterans entitlements, cutting school programs and grants, dictating what our children learn through a thought-controlling test from Washington rather than allowing local school boards and parents to decide how young people should be taught, ignoring the environment, and creating extraneous language in the Patriot Act that removes some of the very freedoms that our founding fathers and generations of soldiers fought so hard to preserve.

We are concerned about the vast exportation of jobs to other countries, due in large part to policies carried out by Bush appointees. Funds previously geared at retention of small companies are being given to larger concerns, such as Halliburton  companies with strong ties to oil and gas. Job training has been cut every year that Bush has resided at the White House.

Then there is his resolve to inadequately finance Homeland Security and to cut the Community Oriented Policing Program (COPS) by 94 percent, to reduce money for rural development, to slash appropriations for the Small Business Administration, and to under fund veterans programs.

Likewise troubling is that President Bush fought against the creation of the 9/11 Commission and is yet to embrace its recommendations.

Vice President Cheneys Halliburton has been awarded multi-billion-dollar contracts without undergoing any meaningful bid process  an enormous conflict of interest  plus the company has been significantly raiding the funds of Export-Import Bank of America, reducing investment that could have gone toward small business trade.

When examined based on all the facts, Kerrys voting record is enviable and echoes that of many Bush allies who are aghast at how the Bush administration has destroyed the American economy. Compared to Bush on economic issues, Kerry would be an archconservative, providing for Americans first. He has what it takes to right our wronged economy.

The re-election of George W. Bush would be a mandate to continue on our present course of chaos. We cannot afford to double the debt that we already have. We need to be moving in the opposite direction.

John Kerry has 30 years of experience looking out for the American people and can navigate our country back to prosperity and re-instill in America the dignity she so craves and deserves. He has served us well as a highly decorated Vietnam veteran and has had a successful career as a district attorney, lieutenant governor, and senator.

Kerry has a positive vision for America, plus the proven intelligence, good sense, and guts to make it happen.

Thats why THE ICONOCLAST urges Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country.

THE ICONOCLAST wholeheartedly endorses John Kerry.

Please allow me to introduce myself.....

I'm clueless about what to write for my own blog once again.  However... I'll do a quick copy/paste of comments I left earlier today for Edgar Frog by way of Pepitor.  :)  BTW What's with all the chewing of things going on these last few days anyway?  Where does this shit come from? 

Here's my quote of me:

"I love you Edgar!

What happened to the commentary on your blog?


HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! I scheduled a flight up to Las Vegas & attempted to map out the location of your Jack Daniel's drop point, but right before my departure my sons & I were struck with a rip-roaring fever. I went to find your paypal button & you took your fucking comments off!! So those are my excuses.. sue me. If you show your face around here I'd be happy to get you drunk in person-- when I'm through with my fever. Otherwise-- if you want anything from me-- fix your blog.

So I've been in bed relaxing with my thoughts, spilling chicken soup on the mattress, kicking over glasses of orange juice, & discovering that meat is rotting in the fridge. In the haze of my scorching delusions, I realized a few things about myself and about why I am the way I am.

I'm happiest among destruction & chaos. I don't like things to be neat & simple & polite. I fucking hate needless drama, but I have far more respect for the basic primal animal urges than the plastic made up artificial mannerisms that are invented to hide them.   I'm not Charlie Manson or Patty Hearst, I don't go for scream therapy, & I've never been a pyromaniac, but I do likes me some primitive weirdness once in a while.

I notice I put my foot in my mouth all the time in social situations-- I'm spontaneous, I'm sometimes crass, I often feel like mouthing off feels more real & less manipulative, and I enjoy having fun WITH people-- though am often accused of making fun OF people I really care for.

People see my creativity as disorganized messiness-- as if I don't care enough about others to make myself perfect or polite for them. I see order as a failure to subvert the dominant paradigm-- I see a mess as another way of doing things and evidence of a time well had.

Thrashing around in a puddle of sweat & granola bar crumbs, I was remembering how things were when I was very very very small. My parents were extremely charismatic & successful at what they did-- my dad was a veteran & a hard core outlaw biker who worked in munitions. My mom is a highly intelligent criminal law attorney now-- but when I was born, she was the extremely underage elementary school drop-out who ran off with a pack of leather clad raging lunatics to live hard & ride free. I remember having to change my own diapers & drinking bottles of spoiled milk & going to refill them myself when my parents were crashed out & had forgetten about me. That made me feel very independent & capable of doing anything. I potty trained damn quick.-- I was responsible for myself because nobody else was there literally to wipe my ass for me. I have a pretty high endurance for extreme situations-- & like a junkie-- I tend to go out on a limb to take risks. So-- I kind of force myself to be a recluse just to keep from wilding out.

I was raised with both an iron fist to do what I was told within the family, yet at the same time I was urged to rebel against authority outside-- to be free & to speak my mind with origionality.

That kind of thinking makes life an adventure, but got me in a lot of misery when situations spun out for the worse. It's easy for others to judge & to misunderstand. Growing up in my house-- there were huge crazy wild loud big bad drunk men hugging each other & play-fighting like gigantic grizzley bears, drinking til the wee hours & reminiscing about the good old days. My father had "brothers" everywhere he went-- so it was like I had many uncles-- I was a little princess in a pack of wolves going on wild midnight motorcyle runs, racing like thundering banshees on a straight shot freeway adventure through the moonlit California wilderness. Crass as they were, they always treated me with love even if they were knocking their old lady's teeth out against the bathroom mirror or chopping up lines on top of my bedroom dresser. If I call a woman a broad or a chick or a slut or a battle-axe or a righteous old lady-- it's out of love & friendship-- it's not neccessarily a derogatory disrespectful put-down. Even "free-hole slut" to some is a highly valued sign of deep affection. Stick that file in the women's lib bucket-- I want the freedom to call a whore a whore & a bitch a bitch without people taking me literally every time. Still... I had to learn the hard way that what is familiar & friendly & cute to me is absolutely offensive to people who don't think like I do- who don't have the experiences or the self-deprecating sense of humor I've had. I'd be tempted to say fuck-em that's their problem... but now that I have kids of my own I have to recognize that you have to get in where you fit in-- you have to be capable of wearing many hats to survive & succeed without sacrificing who you really are deep inside.  I'll always think nasty is cute, & I'm not changing my mind, but since a lot of people disagree with me-- I keep my thoughts to myself more than I used to. When in Rome you know. I'm totally detached now about my feelings for how I was raised-- I didn't get a whole lot of useful people skills as you can see. I used to really resent my parents for being so self-involved, & I'm not really close with my mom now after having been ignored in favor her other more important concerns all my life. My dad's passed on, & he needed me to mother him more than he fathered me. I'm thankful for some of the knowledge I came up with-- but I wouldn't want my sons having to endure so much catostrophic insanity-- I'd raise hell's fury to protect them from such danger. They may be spoiled little brats once in a while, but they do know how to act when it matters. They know they're loved, & that I love them enough to explain that they can't always speak their mind & be overly boisterous to everyone without something somewhere backfiring. I hope they'll still have the spirit to cut-loose & enjoy life, but also the self-discipline to protect themselves from letting it go too far. nikola1tesla | Email | Homepage | 10.05.04 - 10:00 pm | #

And... Rest in Paradise Rodney. I respect you. Fuck 'em that don't. nikola1tesla | Email | Homepage | 10.05.04 - 10:11 pm | #   "

Do you live near Hollywood?  Good.

Live MUSIC:  ERIK SCOTT SMITH   www.erikscottsmith.com

Friday, Oct 15 8:30 PM

The Sunset Room

1430 North Cahuenga Boulevard

Hollywood, CA 90028

~O~+~O~+~O~+~O~+~O~+~O~+~O~+~O~+~

Thursday, Nov 4  8:30 PM

The Rainbow Bar and Grill

9015 Sunset Boulevard

West Hollywood, CA 90069

  Excerpt From....

I.

     In the greenest of our valleys,
         By good angels tenanted,
     Once a fair and stately palace —
         Snow-white palace — reared its head.
     In the monarch Thought's dominion —
         It stood there!
     Never seraph spread a pinion
         Over fabric half so fair.

                       II.

     Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
         On its roof did float and flow;
     (This — all this — was in the olden
         Time long ago)
     And every gentle air that dallied,
         In that sweet day,
     Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
         A winged odor went away.

                      III.

     Wanderers in that happy valley
         Through two luminous windows saw
     Spirits moving musically
         To a lute's well-tuned law,
     Round about a throne, where sitting
         (Porphyrogene!)
     In state his glory well befitting,
         The sovereign of the realm was seen.

                       IV.

     And all with pearl and ruby glowing
         Was the fair palace door,
     Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
         And sparkling evermore,
     A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
         Was but to sing,
     In voices of surpassing beauty,
         The wit and wisdom of their king.

                        V.

     But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
         Assailed the monarch's high estate;
     (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
         Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
     And, round about his home, the glory
         That blushed and bloomed
     Is but a dim-remembered story
         Of the old time entombed.

                         VI.

     And travellers now within that valley,
         Through the red-litten windows, see
     Vast forms that move fantastically
         To a discordant melody; [page 90:]
     While, like a rapid ghastly river,
         Through the pale door,
     A hideous throng rush out forever,
         And laugh — but smile no more.

http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/wohlpart/alra/PoeFall.htm

http://www.poedecoder.com/essays/usher/

Excerpt from....

by Edgar Allan Poe
(1846)

 "It is nothing," he said; "let us go on. But first, another draught of the Medoc."
   I broke and reached him a flagon of De Grave. He emptied it at a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand.
   I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement --a grotesque one.
   "You do not comprehend?" he said.
   "Not I," I replied.
   "Then you are not of the brotherhood."
   "How?"
   "You are not of the masons."
   "Yes, yes," I said; "yes, yes."
   "You? Impossible! A mason?"
   "A mason," I replied.
   "A sign," he said, "a sign."
   "It is this," I answered, producing from beneath the folds of my roquelaire a trowel.
   "You jest," he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. "But let us proceed to the Amontillado."
   "Be it so," I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak and again offering him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily. We continued our route in search of the Amontillado. We passed through a range of low arches, descended, passed on, and descending again, arrived at a deep crypt, in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather to glow than flame.

http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/poe/works/cask_amo.html

 Ike: (sings.) Koo-waaaar estand teeyu bee! I wen' an'a teacher wanna punch me!

Cartman: (on his mic.) NOT THE NEXT SONG! THE NEXT PERSON!

(Ike takes his sheet music, flips Cartman the finger, and leaves.)

Cartman: Oh, man! This is gonna be a long-assed day! (Wendy enters with HER sheet music which she gives to the little piano-playing kid. Cartman talks on his mic again.) Oh, no! No, no, no, no, no, no, no! Sorry, Wendy! This is tryouts for a BOY-band!

Stan: Aw, c'mon, dude! Let'er try!

Cartman: No way!

Kyle: C'mon, Cartman! Y'aven't liked anybody else!

Cartman: (on his mic.) Okay, okay, fine! Wow me!

Wendy: (the music starts. she sings.) Mrs. Landers was a help-maid! She cooked food in a wok! Mr. Harris was her boyfriend and he had a great big___Cock-a-doodle-doodle! The rooster just crowed great, and I don't want my breakfast, because it tastes like___Shih tzus make good house pets! They're cuddly and sweet! Monkeys aren't good to have 'cause they like to beat___They're meeting in the office or meeting in the hall! The bossy want's to see you so you can suck___Hisbalzek was a writer! He lived with Allen Funt! Mrs. Roberts didn't like him, but that's 'cause she's a___Contaminated water can really make you sick! Your bladder gets infected and blood comes out your___Dictate what I'm saying, 'cause it will bring you luck, and if you all don't like it, I don't give a flying fuck!

(Kenny, Kyle, and Stan applaud Wendy.)

Cartman: (on his mic.) Thanks, Wendy! Don't call us! We won't call you either! Heh, heh!

(Wendy looks angry.)

Kyle: Dude! What're you talking about?! That was awesome!

Cartman: Dude, she's a chick!

Stan: C'mon! Nobody's gonna notice!

Cartman: NOBODY'S GONNA NOTICE?! WHAT ABOUT HER HUGE FRICKIN' HOOTERS, HUH?!

(Wendy spreads her arms to look at her chest.)

Stan: She's the best chance we have! I say she's in!

Kyle: Me too!

Kenny: {Me too!}

Cartman: Oh! This is a democratic boy-band, is it?! Alright! Fine! She's in until she screws up!

Wendy: Yeah!

http://www.southpark.dsl.pipex.com/scripts/scr409.shtml

Stained with shame

“HAVE you noticed?” The question managed to register despite the wind swooping through the open cabin window and battering your face.
No, you haven’t noticed because you weren’t looking or thinking or whatever it was you were doing, to notice.
Then your thoughts take over. Hang on. Maybe we’re jumping the gun here. The obvious question should have been ‘what, where, who, why, when, how...?’
“One question at a time, huh?” the driver says.
Oops! You were thinking aloud.
You: What?
Him: Betel nut stains.
You: Where?
Him: There on the road.
You: Who?
Him: Don’t know.
You: Why?
Him: Ask them.
You: Ask who?
Him: That question’s been asked. Next.
You: When?
Him: All the time.
You: How?
Him: If you’ve seen the TV ads, you’ll know how.
Each question was uttered and answered without a flicker of interest between the two parties, until the tell tale signs of the scarlet splotches cut through your vision and registered in your brain.
Mind you, your eyes have been glued on the road - or more precisely - the bitumen since the conversation began and you were not looking for stains at all. In fact, the cabin small talk flowed as if it was mentally rehearsed earlier - utterances came naturally. There was no big deal in that.
Now as the wind changed with the direction of your vehicle’s movement, there it was in all its ignominy.
And by Golly, you noticed. Blotches of all shapes and sizes discolouring the bitumen every which way you looked. Mind you, the vehicle was moving at just over 50 KMP and the longer and harder you looked, you realized that not even a good stretch of the bitumen was spared the scarlet tide.
Over a distance of a kilometer on the road, you see them in all shapes and sizes - mostly elongated blotches- indicating spit from moving vehicles. The shapes become a gamut of splotches on certain parts of the roads, but concentrated at the major bus stops.
Over a kilometer stretch of a busy road, you’ll conclude that that’s certainly quite a lot of blotches and splotches over a stretch of road.
Just imagine how much of that stuff is on the road from one end of the city to the other end and multiply that by the number of roads and streets into and out of suburbs and settlements.
From your assessment, the stain on the bitumen from Hanuabada to Gerehu seemed like a passenger never closed his/her mouth when he/she began spitting out the window. Furthermore, it seemed like he/she had a never-ending supply of spit. Either that or he/she was full of ...um... betelnut.
Pretty soon, a patch of pure, unadulterated bitumen will be a rare sight indeed, given the current evidence and the continued rate of spitting on the road.
Looking at a bigger picture, throw in the Highlands, Buluminski, Hiritano and Magi highways and you start to wonder if these roads would not register red or some faded form of the colour in satellite and aerial photographs in the not-to-distant future.
Disgusting, isn’t it? The evidence has been on the wall of public buildings and on every other thing for that matter all along.
The ‘red tide’ is upon us. With an increasing population, sooner or later, it is going to literally wash over us.
And who can say it is not being encouraged by public bus stops and pick-up and drop off points acting as market places for the informal sector.
You recall years ago, someone telling you that when you go to this Asian city, you’re bound to see rivers flowing in the roadside curbs. Water? No! Spit - it’s the result of a mouthful of spit discharged by the millions of people in the city during the day.
This is Papua New Guinea, you say, the land of the unexpected. Don’t expect to find your bitumen black; don’t expect the bus driver to tell you not to spit out the window of the PMV; don’t be surprised to feel the wetness on your face and suspect the sky’s just opened up just a wee little bit to water the flowers; don’t think that the red blotch that has just landed on your face is the discarded ‘tool’ of a failed artist or painter....
Okay, we’re not exactly puritans, but hey, we don’t exactly live in toilets. But then again, that seems to be changing. It has been noted down town that some of our more aggressive entrepreneurs have staked their claims on the public toilets. They’ve been cleaning it, see, and realized that they could charge a fee on the public for its use. A steady income meant setting up sleeping quarters on the work premises on long to medium to long-term tenures.
And with the Chinese tale in mind, you shudder at the thought of the great curbside rivers of red that would soon inundate and consume the cities of Papua New Guinea.
Remember the story of Greedy Midas, who turned everything he touched into gold, including his only child?
You wish the same touch could be endowed on all betelnut chewers spit. Splat here and the street turns gold; splat there and the walls of the shop lights up in the brilliance of pure gold. Pity, it’s just a fairy tale.
Trivial this subject may seem, problems, you know, start from even the most minor thing.
As the Wise Counsellor says: “Nothing is opened more by mistake than the mouth...”

 http://www.thenational.com.pg/1006/w4.htm

http://www.colinfarrellfansite.org/viewforum.php?f=20

Chef (from South Park) - Chocolate Salty Balls Lyrics





Two tablespoons of cinnamon
And 2 or 3 egg whites
A half a stick of butter melted
Stick it all in a bowl baby
Stir it with a wooden spoon
Mix in a cup of flour you'll be in heaven soon

[bridge]
Say everybody have you seen my balls
They are big and salty and brown
If you ever need a quick pick me up
Just stick my balls in your mouth

Suck on my chocolate salty balls
Stick em in your mouth and suck em
Suck on my chocolate salty balls
They are packed full of vitamins and good for you
So suck on my balls

Quarter cup of unsweeted chocolate
And a half a cup of brandy
Then throw in a bag or two of sugar
And just a pinch of vanilla
Grease up the cookie sheet
Cause I hate when my balls stick
Then preheat the oven for three fifty
And give that spoon a lick

[brigde]

Suck on my chocolate salty balls
Stick em in your mouth and suck em
Suck on my chocolate salty balls
They are packed full of goodness high in fiber
So suck on my balls

Hey wait a minute what's that smell
Smell like something burning
Well that don't confront me now
Long as I get my rent paid on friday
Baby you better get back in the kitchen
Cause I got a sneakin suspision
Oh my baby baby you just burned my balls
Come my balls on fire
Have mercy baby my balls are burning
Gimme some water pour some water on me
My balls are burning oh my goodness
I'm blowing I'm blowing them do something

Suck on my chocolate salty balls
Put em in your mouth and suck em
Suck on my chocolate salty balls
Put em out baby blow em
Suck on my balls baby (repeat 2 times)
Come on baby
Suck on my balls

Damn lady, I just gave you lovin' 5 minutes
and you try to cure me ?



_________________
ALEXANDER AT TECHCOMFORCES ALEXANDER TRAILER
 

Cool Erik Scott Smith & His Rockin Guitar

Here's where he'll be for the first show:

http://www.thesunsetroom.com/

FRIDAY OCT 15 8:30 PM

The Sunset Room
1430 North Cahuenga Boulevard
Hollywood CA 90028



SWANKY!!

Thursday November 4 8:30PM

The Rainbow Bar and Grill
9015 Sunset Boulevard
West Hollywood, CA 90069
_________________

http://www.rainbowbarandgrill.com/

Come on out & show some love!

www.erikscottsmith.com

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

http://spatula.blog.com/

How John Kerry exposed the Contra-cocaine scandal http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/25/contra/index.html

Clockwise from top left: A Contra at his base camp on the Honduran-Nicaraguan border; Sen. John Kerry, in 1986; and a seized shipment of cocaine.

Sunday, Oct. 24, 2004

[In News & Politics]

How John Kerry exposed the Contra-cocaine scandal

Derided by the mainstream press and taking on Reagan at the height of his popularity, the freshman senator battled to reveal one of America's ugliest foreign policy secrets. - - - - - - - - - - - -

By Robert Parry Oct. 25, 2004

| In December 1985, when Brian Barger and I wrote a groundbreaking story for the Associated Press about Nicaraguan Contra rebels smuggling cocaine into the United States, one U.S. senator put his political career on the line to follow up on our disturbing findings. His name was John Kerry. Yet, over the past year, even as Kerry's heroism as a young Navy officer in Vietnam has become a point of controversy, this act of political courage by a freshman senator has gone virtually unmentioned, even though -- or perhaps because -- it marked Kerry's first challenge to the Bush family. In early 1986, the 42-year-old Massachusetts Democrat stood almost alone in the U.S. Senate demanding answers about the emerging evidence that CIA-backed Contras were filling their coffers by collaborating with drug traffickers then flooding U.S. borders with cocaine from South America.Kerry assigned members of his personal Senate staff to pursue the allegations. He also persuaded the Republican majority on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to request information from the Reagan-Bush administration about the alleged Contra drug traffickers. In taking on the inquiry, Kerry challenged President Ronald Reagan at the height of his power, at a time he was calling the Contras the "moral equals of the Founding Fathers." Kerry's questions represented a particular embarrassment to Vice President George H.W. Bush, whose responsibilities included overseeing U.S. drug-interdiction policies. Kerry took on the investigation though he didn't have much support within his own party. By 1986, congressional Democrats had little stomach left for challenging the Reagan-Bush Contra war. Not only had Reagan won a historic landslide in 1984, amassing a record 54 million votes, but his conservative allies were targeting individual Democrats viewed as critical of the Contras fighting to oust Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista government. Most Washington journalists were backing off, too, for fear of getting labeled "Sandinista apologists" or worse. Kerry's probe infuriated Reagan's White House, which was pushing Congress to restore military funding for the Contras. Some in the administration also saw Kerry's investigation as a threat to the secrecy surrounding the Contra supply operation, which was being run illegally by White House aide Oliver North and members of Bush's vice presidential staff. Through most of 1986, Kerry's staff inquiry advanced against withering political fire. His investigators interviewed witnesses in Washington, contacted Contra sources in Miami and Costa Rica, and tried to make sense of sometimes convoluted stories of intrigue from the shadowy worlds of covert warfare and the drug trade. Kerry's chief Senate staff investigators were Ron Rosenblith, Jonathan Winer and Dick McCall. Rosenblith, a Massachusetts political strategist from Kerry's victorious 1984 campaign, braved both political and personal risks as he traveled to Central America for face-to-face meetings with witnesses. Winer, a lawyer also from Massachusetts, charted the inquiry's legal framework and mastered its complex details. McCall, an experienced congressional staffer, brought Capitol Hill savvy to the investigation. Behind it all was Kerry, who combined a prosecutor's sense for sniffing out criminality and a politician's instinct for pushing the limits. The Kerry whom I met during this period was a complex man who balanced a rebellious idealism with a determination not to burn his bridges to the political establishment. The Reagan administration did everything it could to thwart Kerry's investigation, including attempting to discredit witnesses, stonewalling the Senate when it requested evidence and assigning the CIA to monitor Kerry's probe. But it couldn't stop Kerry and his investigators from discovering the explosive truth: that the Contra war was permeated with drug traffickers who gave the Contras money, weapons and equipment in exchange for help in smuggling cocaine into the United States. Even more damningly, Kerry found that U.S. government agencies knew about the Contra-drug connection, but turned a blind eye to the evidence in order to avoid undermining a top Reagan-Bush foreign policy initiative. The Reagan administration's tolerance and protection of this dark underbelly of the Contra war represented one of the most sordid scandals in the history of U.S. foreign policy. Yet when Kerry's bombshell findings were released in 1989, they were greeted by the mainstream press with disdain and disinterest. The New York Times, which had long denigrated the Contra-drug allegations, buried the story of Kerry's report on its inside pages, as did the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. For his tireless efforts, Kerry earned a reputation as a reckless investigator. Newsweek's Conventional Wisdom Watch dubbed Kerry a "randy conspiracy buff." But almost a decade later, in 1998, Kerry's trailblazing investigation was vindicated by the CIA's own inspector general, who found that scores of Contra operatives were implicated in the cocaine trade and that U.S. agencies had looked the other way rather than reveal information that could have embarrassed the Reagan-Bush administration. Even after the CIA's admissions, the national press corps never fully corrected its earlier dismissive treatment. That would have meant the New York Times and other leading publications admitting they had bungled their coverage of one of the worst scandals of the Reagan-Bush era. Next page | Acknowledging the Contra scandal would mean reappraising Reagan 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6


The warm and fuzzy glow that surrounded Ronald Reagan after he left office also discouraged clarification of the historical record. Taking a clear-eyed look at crimes inside Reagan's Central American policies would have required a tough reassessment of the 40th president, which to this day the media has been unwilling to do. So this formative period of Kerry's political evolution has remained nearly unknown to the American electorate. Two decades later, it's hard to recall the intensity of the administration's support for the Contras. They were hailed as courageous front-line fighters, like the Mujahedin in Afghanistan, defending the free world from the Soviet empire. Reagan famously warned that Nicaragua was only "two days' driving time from Harlingen, Texas." Yet, for years, Contra units had gone on bloody rampages through Nicaraguan border towns, raping women, torturing captives and executing civilian officials of the Sandinista government. In private, Reagan referred to the Contras as "vandals," according to Duane Clarridge, the CIA officer in charge of the operation, in his memoir, "A Spy for All Seasons." But in public, the Reagan administration attacked anyone who pointed out the Contras' corruption and brutality. The Contras also proved militarily inept, causing the CIA to intervene directly and engage in warlike acts, such as mining Nicaragua's harbors. In 1984, these controversies caused the Congress to forbid U.S. military assistance to the Contras -- the Boland Amendment -- forcing the rebels to search for new funding sources. Drug money became the easiest way to fill the depleted Contra coffers. The documentary evidence is now irrefutable that a number of Contra units both in Costa Rica and Honduras opened or deepened ties to Colombian cartels and other regional drug traffickers. The White House also scrambled to find other ways to keep the Contras afloat, turning to third countries, such as Saudi Arabia, and eventually to profits from clandestine arms sales to Iran. The secrets began to seep out in the mid-1980s. In June 1985, as a reporter for the Associated Press, I wrote the first story mentioning Oliver North's secret Contra supply operation. By that fall, my AP colleague Brian Barger and I stumbled onto evidence that some of the Contras were supplementing their income by helping traffickers transship cocaine through Central America. As we dug deeper, it became clear that the drug connection implicated nearly all the major Contra organizations. The AP published our story about the Contra-cocaine evidence on Dec. 20, 1985, describing Contra units "engaged in cocaine smuggling, using some of the profits to finance their war against Nicaragua's leftist government." The story provoked little coverage elsewhere in the U.S. national press corps. But it pricked the interest of a newly elected U.S. senator, John Kerry. A former prosecutor, Kerry also heard about Contra law violations from a Miami-based federal public defender named John Mattes, who had been assigned a case that touched on Contra gunrunning. Mattes' sister had worked for Kerry in Massachusetts. By spring 1986, Kerry had begun a limited investigation deploying some of his personal staff in Washington. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry managed to gain some cooperation from the panel's Republican leadership, partly because the "war on drugs" was then a major political issue. Besides looking into Contra drug trafficking, Kerry launched the first investigation into the allegations of weapons smuggling and misappropriation of U.S. government funds that were later exposed as part of North's illegal operation to supply the Contras. Kerry's staff soon took an interest in a federal probe in Miami headed by assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Feldman. Talking to some of the same Contra supporters whom we had interviewed for the AP's Contra-cocaine story, Feldman had pieced together the outlines of North's secret network. In a panicked memo dated April 7, 1986, one of North's Costa Rican-based private operatives, Robert Owen, warned North that prosecutor Feldman had shown Ambassador Lewis Tambs "a diagram with your name underneath and John [Hull]'s underneath mine, then a line connecting the various resistance groups in C.R. [Costa Rica]. Feldman stated they were looking at the 'big picture' and not only looking at possible violations of the Neutrality Act, but a possible unauthorized use of government funds." (For details, see my "Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press and 'Project Truth.'") John Hull was an American farmer with a ranch in Costa Rica near the Nicaraguan border. According to witnesses, Contras had used Hull's property for cocaine transshipments. (Hull was later accused of drug trafficking by Costa Rican authorities, but fled the country before facing trial. He returned to the United States.) On April 10, 1986, Barger and I reported on the AP wire that the U.S. Attorney's office in Miami was examining allegations of Contra gunrunning and drug trafficking. The AP story rattled nerves inside the Reagan administration. On an unrelated trip to Miami, Attorney General Edwin Meese pulled U.S. Attorney Leon Kellner aside and asked about the existence of this Contra probe. Back in Washington, other major news organizations began to sniff around the Contra-cocaine story but mostly went off in wrong directions. On May 6, 1986, the New York Times relied for a story on information from Meese's spokesman Patrick Korten, who claimed "various bits of information got referred to us. We ran them all down and didn't find anything. It comes to nothing." But that wasn't the truth. In Miami, Feldman and FBI agents were corroborating many of the allegations. On May 14, 1986, Feldman recommended to his superiors that the evidence of Contra crimes was strong enough to justify taking the case to a grand jury. U.S. Attorney Kellner agreed, scribbling on Feldman's memo, "I concur that we have sufficient evidence to ask for a grand jury investigation." But on May 20, less than a week later, Kellner reversed that recommendation. Without telling Feldman, Kellner rewrote the memo to state that "a grand jury investigation at this point would represent a fishing expedition with little prospect that it would bear fruit." Kellner signed Feldman's name to the mixed-metaphor memo and sent it to Washington on June 3. The revised "Feldman" memo was then circulated to congressional Republicans and leaked to conservative media, which used it to discredit Kerry's investigation. The right-wing Washington Times denounced the probe as a wasteful political "witch hunt" in a June 12, 1986, article. "Kerry's anti-Contra efforts extensive, expensive, in vain," screamed the headline of a Washington Times article on Aug. 13, 1986. Back in Miami, Kellner reassigned Feldman to unrelated far-flung investigations, including one to Thailand. The altered memo was instrumental in steering Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., away from holding hearings, Kerry's later Contra-drug report, "Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy," stated. "Material provided to the Committee by the Justice Department and distributed to members following an Executive Session June 26, 1986, wrongly suggested that the allegations that had been made were false," the Kerry report said. Next page | Oliver North called a whistleblowing former Contra a "terrorist" 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6


Feldman later testified to the Senate that he was told in 1986 that representatives of the Justice Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI had met "to discuss how Senator Kerry's efforts to get Lugar to hold hearings on the case could be undermined." Mattes, the federal public defender in Miami, watched as the administration ratcheted up pressure on Kerry's investigation. "From a political point of view in May of '86, Kerry had every reason to shut down his staff investigation," Mattes said. "There was no upside for him doing it. We all felt under the gun to back off." The Kerry that Mattes witnessed at the time was the ex-prosecutor determined to get to the bottom of serious criminal allegations even if they implicated senior government officials. "As an investigator, he had a sense it was there," said Mattes, who is now an investigative reporter for Fox News in San Diego. "Kerry was a crusader. He was the consummate outsider, doing what you expect people to do. ... At no point did he flinch." Years later, in the National Archives, I discovered a document showing that the Central Intelligence Agency also was keeping tabs on Kerry's investigation. Alan Fiers Jr., who served as the CIA's Central American Task Force chief, told independent counsel Lawrence Walsh's Iran-Contra investigators that the AP and Feldman's investigations had attracted the hostility of the Reagan-Bush administration. Fiers said he "was also getting a dump on the Senator Kerry investigation about mercenary activity in Central America from the CIA's legislative affairs people who were monitoring it." Negative publicity about the Contras was particularly unwelcome to the Reagan-Bush administration throughout the spring and summer 1986 as the White House battled to restore U.S. government funding to the Contras. In the politically heated atmosphere, the administration sought to smear anti-Contra witnesses cooperating with Kerry's investigation. In a July 28 memo, initialed as read by President Reagan, North labeled onetime Contra mercenary Jack Terrell as a "terrorist threat" because of his "anti-Contra and anti-U.S. activities." North said Terrell had been cooperating "with various congressional staffs in preparing for hearings and inquiries regarding the role of U.S. government officials in illegally supporting the Nicaraguan resistance." In August 1986, FBI and Secret Service agents hauled Terrell in for two days of polygraph examinations on suspicion that Terrell intended to assassinate President Reagan, an allegation that proved baseless. But Terrell told me later that the investigation had chilled his readiness to testify about the Contras. "It burned me up," he said. "The pressure was always there." Beyond intimidating some witnesses, the Reagan administration systematically worked to frustrate Kerry's investigation. Years later, one of Kerry's investigators, Jack Blum, complained publicly that the Justice Department had actively obstructed the congressional probe. Blum said William Weld, who took over as assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division in September 1986, was an "absolute stonewall" blocking the Senate's access to evidence on Contra-cocaine smuggling. "Weld put a very serious block on any effort we made to get information," Blum told the Senate Intelligence Committee a decade after the events. "There were stalls. There were refusals to talk to us, refusals to turn over data." Weld, who later became Massachusetts governor and lost to Kerry in the 1996 Senate race, denied that he had obstructed Kerry's Contra probe. But it was clear that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was encountering delays in getting information that had been requested by Chairman Lugar, a Republican, and Rhode Island Sen. Claiborne Pell, the ranking Democrat. At Kerry's suggestion, they had sought files on more than two dozen people linked to the Contra operations and suspected of drug trafficking. Inside the Justice Department, senior career investigators grew concerned about the administration's failure to turn over the requested information. "I was concerned that we were not responding to what was obviously a legitimate congressional request," Mark Richard, one of Weld's top deputies, testified in a deposition. "We were not refusing to respond in giving explanations or justifications for it. We were seemingly just stonewalling what was a continuing barrage of requests for information. That concerned me no end." On Sept. 26, 1986, Kerry tried to spur action by presenting Weld with an 11-page "proffer" statement from a 31-year-old FBI informant who had worked with the Medellin cartel and had become a witness on cartel activities. The woman, Wanda Palacio, had approached Kerry with an account about Colombian cocaine kingpin Jorge Ochoa bragging about payments he had made to the Nicaraguan Contras. As part of this Contra connection, Palacio said pilots for a CIA-connected airline, Southern Air Transport, were flying cocaine out of Barranquilla, Colombia. She said she had witnessed two such flights, one in 1983 and the other in October 1985, and quoted Ochoa saying the flights were part of an arrangement to exchange "drugs for guns." According to contemporaneous notes of this "proffer" meeting between Weld and Kerry, Weld chuckled that he was not surprised at allegations about corrupt dealings by "bum agents, former and current CIA agents." He promised to give serious consideration to Palacio's allegations. After Kerry left Weld's office, however, the Justice Department seemed to concentrate on poking holes in Palacio's account, not trying to corroborate it. Though Palacio had been considered credible in her earlier testimony to the FBI, she was judged to lack credibility when she made accusations about the Contras and the CIA. On Oct. 3, 1986, Weld's office told Kerry that it was rejecting Palacio as a witness on the grounds that there were some contradictions in her testimony. The discrepancies apparently related to such minor points as which month she had first talked with the FBI. Two days after Weld rejected Palacio's Contra-cocaine testimony, other secrets about the White House's covert Contra support operations suddenly crashed --literally -- into view. Next page | The CIA-cocaine connection exposed in the jungle 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6


On Oct. 5, a quiet Sunday morning, an aging C-123 cargo plane rumbled over the skies of Nicaragua preparing to drop AK-47 rifles and other equipment to Contra units in the jungle below. Since the Reagan administration had recently won congressional approval for renewed CIA military aid to the Contras, the flight was to be one of the last by Oliver North's ragtag air force. The plane, however, attracted the attention of a teenage Sandinista soldier armed with a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile. He aimed, pulled the trigger and watched as the Soviet-made missile made a direct hit on the aircraft. Inside, cargo handler Eugene Hasenfus, an American mercenary working with the Contras, was knocked to the floor, but managed to crawl to an open door, push himself through, and parachute to the ground, where he was captured by Sandinista forces. The pilot and other crew members died in the crash. As word spread about the plane crash, Barger -- who had left the AP and was working for a CBS News show -- persuaded me to join him on a trip to Nicaragua with the goal of getting an interview with Hasenfus, who turned out to be an unemployed Wisconsin construction worker and onetime CIA cargo handler. Hasenfus told a press conference in Managua that the Contra supply operation was run by CIA officers working with the office of Vice President George Bush. Administration officials, including Bush, denied any involvement with the downed plane. Looking for Love? Try Salon Personals Our hopes for an interview with Hasenfus didn't work out, but Sandinista officials did let us examine the flight records and other documents they had recovered from the plane. As Barger talked with a senior Nicaraguan officer, I hastily copied down the entries from copilot Wallace "Buzz" Sawyer's flight logs. The logs listed hundreds of flights with the airports identified only by their four-letter international codes and the planes designated by tail numbers. Upon returning to Washington, I began deciphering Wallace's travels and matching the tail numbers with their registered owners. Though Wallace's flights included trips to Africa and landings at U.S. military bases in the West, most of his entries were for flights in Central and South America. Meanwhile, in Kerry's Senate office, witness Wanda Palacio was waiting for a meeting when she noticed Sawyer's photo flashing on a TV screen. Palacio began insisting that Sawyer was one of the pilots whom she had witnessed loading cocaine onto a Southern Air Transport plane in Barranquilla, Colombia, in early October 1985. Her identification of Sawyer struck some of Kerry's aides as a bit too convenient, causing them to have their own doubts about her credibility. Though I was unaware of Palacio's claims at the time, I pressed ahead with the AP story on Sawyer's travels. In the last paragraph of the article, I noted that Sawyer's logs revealed that he had piloted a Southern Air Transport plane on three flights to Barranquilla on Oct. 2, 4, and 6, 1985. The story ran on Oct. 17, 1986. Shortly after the article moved on the AP wires, I received a phone call from Rosenblith at Kerry's office. Sounding shocked, the Kerry investigator asked for more details about the last paragraph of the story, but he wouldn't say why he wanted to know. Only months later did I discover that the AP story on Sawyer's logs had provided unintentional corroboration for Palacio's Contra-drug allegations. Palacio also passed a polygraph exam on her statements. But Weld and the Justice Department still refused to accept her testimony as credible. (Even a decade later, when I asked the then-Massachusetts governor about Palacio, Weld likened her credibility to "a wagon load of diseased blankets.") In fall 1986, Weld's criminal division continued to withhold Contra-drug information requested by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. According to Justice Department records, Lugar and Pell -- two of the Senate's most gentlemanly members -- wrote on Oct. 14 that they had been waiting more than two months for information that the Justice Department had promised "in an expeditious manner." "To date, no information has been received and the investigation of allegations by the committee, therefore, has not moved very far," Lugar and Pell wrote in a joint letter. "We're disappointed that the Department has not responded in a timely fashion and indeed has not provided any materials." On Nov. 25, 1986, the Iran-Contra scandal was officially born when Attorney General Edwin Meese announced that profits from secret U.S. arms sales to Iran had been diverted to help fund the Nicaraguan Contras. The Washington press corps scrambled to get a handle on the dramatic story of clandestine operations, but still resisted the allegations that the administration's zeal had spilled over into sanctioning or tolerating Contra-connected drug trafficking. Though John Kerry's early warnings about White House-aided Contra gunrunning had proved out, his accusations about Contra drug smuggling would continue to be rejected by much of the press corps as going too far. On Jan. 21, 1987, the conservative Washington Times attacked Kerry's Contra-drug investigation again; his alleged offense this time was obstructing justice because his probe was supposedly interfering with the Reagan administration's determination to get at the truth. "Kerry's staffers damaged FBI probe," the Times headline read. "Congressional investigators for Sen. John Kerry severely damaged a federal drug investigation last summer by interfering with a witness while pursuing allegations of drug smuggling by the Nicaraguan resistance, federal law enforcement officials said," according to the Times article. Next page | The New York Times sets the parameters for a "responsible" Iran-Contra investigation 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6


How John Kerry exposed the Contra-cocaine scandal | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 The mainstream press continued to publish stories that denigrated Kerry's investigation. On Feb. 24, 1987, a New York Times article by reporter Keith Schneider quoted "law enforcement officials" saying that the Contra allegations "have come from a small group of convicted drug traffickers in South Florida who never mentioned Contras or the White House until the Iran-Contra affair broke in November." The drift of the article made Kerry out to be something of a dupe. His Contra-cocaine witnesses were depicted as simply convicts trying to get lighter prison sentences by embroidering false allegations onto the Iran-Contra scandal. But the information in the Times story was patently untrue. The AP Contra-cocaine story had run in December 1985, almost a year before the Iran-Contra story broke. When New York Times reporters conducted their own interview with Palacio, she immediately sensed their hostility. In her Senate deposition, Palacio described her experience at the Times office in Miami. She said Schneider and a "Cuban man" rudely questioned her story and bullied her about specific evidence for each of her statements. The Cuban man "was talking to me kind of nasty," Palacio recalled. "I got up and left, and this man got all pissed off, Keith Schneider." The parameters for a "responsible" Iran-Contra investigation were being set. On July 16, 1987, the New York Times published another story that seemed to discredit the Contra-drug charges. It reported that except for a few convicted drug smugglers from Miami, the Contra-cocaine "charges have not been verified by any other people and have been vigorously denied by several government agencies." Four days later, the Times added that "investigators, including reporters from major news outlets, have tried without success to find proof of ... allegations that military supplies may have been paid for with profits from drug smuggling." (The Times was inaccurate again. The original AP story had cited a CIA report describing the Contras buying a helicopter with drug money.) The joint Senate-House Iran-Contra committee averted its eyes from the Contra-cocaine allegations. The only time the issue was raised publicly was when a demonstrator interrupted one hearing by shouting, "Ask about the cocaine." Kerry was excluded from the investigation. On July 27, 1987, behind the scenes, committee staff investigator Robert A. Bermingham echoed the New York Times. "Hundreds of persons" had been questioned, he said, and vast numbers of government files reviewed, but no "corroboration of media-exploited allegations of U.S. government-condoned drug trafficking by Contra leaders or Contra organizations" was found. The report, however, listed no names of any interview subjects nor any details about the files examined. Bermingham's conclusions conflicted with closed-door Iran-Contra testimony from administration insiders. In a classified deposition to the congressional Iran-Contra committees, senior CIA officer Alan Fiers said, "with respect to [drug trafficking by] the Resistance Forces [the Contras] it is not a couple of people. It is a lot of people." Despite official denials and press hostility, Kerry and his investigators pressed ahead. In 1987, with the arrival of a Democratic majority in the Senate, Kerry also became chairman of the Senate subcommittee on terrorism, narcotics and international operations. He used that position to pry loose the facts proving that the official denials were wrong and that Contra units were involved in the drug trade. Kerry's report was issued two years later, on April 13, 1989. Its stunning conclusion: "On the basis of the evidence, it is clear that individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the Contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers. In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had information regarding the involvement either while it was occurring, or immediately thereafter." The report discovered that drug traffickers gave the Contras "cash, weapons, planes, pilots, air supply services and other materials." Moreover, the U.S. State Department had paid some drug traffickers as part of a program to fly non-lethal assistance to the Contras. Some payments occurred "after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies." Although Kerry's findings represented the first time a congressional report explicitly accused federal agencies of willful collaboration with drug traffickers, the major news organizations chose to bury the startling findings. Instead of front-page treatment, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times all wrote brief accounts and stuck them deep inside their papers. The New York Times article, only 850 words long, landed on Page 8. The Post placed its story on A20. The Los Angeles Times found space on Page 11. One of the best-read political reference books, the Almanac of American Politics, gave this account of Kerry's investigation in its 1992 edition: "In search of right-wing villains and complicit Americans, [Kerry] tried to link Nicaraguan Contras to the drug trade, without turning up much credible evidence." Thus, Kerry's reward for his strenuous and successful efforts to get to the bottom of a difficult case of high-level government corruption was to be largely ignored by the mainstream press and even have his reputation besmirched. Next page | Finally, the CIA itself vindicates Kerry 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6


How John Kerry exposed the Contra-cocaine scandal | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 But the Contra-cocaine story didn't entirely go away. In 1991, in the trial of former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega for drug trafficking, federal prosecutors called as a witness Medellin cartel kingpin Carlos Lehder, who testified that the Medellin cartel had given $10 million to the Contras, a claim that one of Kerry's witnesses had made years earlier. "The Kerry hearings didn't get the attention they deserved at the time," a Washington Post editorial on Nov. 27, 1991 acknowledged. "The Noriega trial brings this sordid aspect of the Nicaraguan engagement to fresh public attention." Kerry's vindication in the Contra drug case did not come until 1998, when inspectors general at the CIA and Justice Department reviewed their files in connection with allegations published by the San Jose Mercury News that the Contra-cocaine pipeline had contributed to the crack epidemic that ravaged inner-city neighborhoods in the 1980s. (Ironically, the major national newspapers only saw fit to put the Contra-cocaine story on their front pages in criticizing the Mercury News and its reporter Gary Webb for taking the allegations too far.) On Oct. 4, 1996, the Washington Post published a front-page story, with two more pages inside, that was critical of the Mercury News. But while accusing the Mercury News of exaggerating, the Post noted that Contra-connected drug smugglers had brought tons of cocaine into the United States. "Even CIA personnel testified to Congress they knew that those covert operations involved drug traffickers," the Post reported. A Post editorial on Oct. 9, 1996, reprised the newspaper's assessment that the Mercury News had overreached, but added that for "CIA-connected characters to have played even a trivial role in introducing Americans to crack would indicate an unconscionable breach by the CIA." In the months that followed, the major newspapers -- including the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times -- joined the Post in criticizing the Mercury News while downplaying their own inattention to the crimes that Kerry had illuminated a decade earlier. The Los Angeles Times actually used Kerry's report to dismiss the Mercury News series as old news because the Contra cocaine trafficking "has been well documented for years." While the major newspapers gloated when reporter Gary Webb was forced to resign from the Mercury News, the internal government investigations, which Webb's series had sparked, moved forward. The government's decade-long Contra cocaine cover-up began to crumble when CIA inspector general Frederick Hitz published the first of two volumes of his Contra cocaine investigation on Jan. 29, 1998, followed by a Justice Department report and Hitz's second volume in October 1998. The CIA inspector general and Justice Department reports confirmed that the Reagan administration knew from almost the outset of the Contra war that cocaine traffickers permeated the CIA-backed army but the administration did next to nothing to expose or stop these criminals. The reports revealed example after example of leads not followed, witnesses disparaged and official law-enforcement investigations sabotaged. The evidence indicated that Contra-connected smugglers included the Medellin cartel, the Panamanian government of Manuel Noriega, the Honduran military, the Honduran-Mexican smuggling ring of Ramon Matta Ballesteros, and Miami-based anti-Castro Cubans. Reviewing evidence that existed in the 1980s, CIA inspector general Hitz found that some Contra-connected drug traffickers worked directly for Reagan's National Security Council staff and the CIA. In 1987, Cuban-American Bay of Pigs veteran Moises Nunez told CIA investigators that "it was difficult to answer questions relating to his involvement in narcotics trafficking because of the specific tasks he had performed at the direction of the NSC." CIA task force chief Fiers said the Nunez-NSC drug lead was not pursued then "because of the NSC connection and the possibility that this could be somehow connected to the Private Benefactor program [Oliver North's fundraising]. A decision was made not to pursue this matter." Another Cuban-American who had attracted Kerry's interest was Felipe Vidal, who had a criminal record as a narcotics trafficker in the 1970s. But the CIA still hired him to serve as a logistics officer for the Contras and covered up for him when the agency learned that he was collaborating with known traffickers to raise money for the Contras, the Hitz report showed. Fiers had briefed Kerry about Vidal on Oct. 15, 1986, without mentioning Vidal's drug arrests and conviction in the 1970s. Hitz found that a chief reason for the CIA's protective handling of Contra-drug evidence was Langley's "one overriding priority: to oust the Sandinista government ... [CIA officers] were determined that the various difficulties they encountered not be allowed to prevent effective implementation of the Contra program." According to Hitz's report, one CIA field officer explained, "The focus was to get the job done, get the support and win the war." This pattern of obstruction occurred while Vice President Bush was in charge of stanching the flow of drugs to the United States. Kerry made himself a pest by demanding answers to troubling questions. "He wanted to get to the bottom of something so dark," former public defender Mattes told me. "Nobody could imagine it was so dark." In the end, investigations by government inspectors general corroborated Kerry's 1989 findings and vindicated his effort. But the muted conclusion of the Contra-cocaine controversy 12 years after Kerry began his investigation explains why this chapter is an overlooked -- though important -- episode in Kerry's Senate career. It's a classic case of why, in Washington, there's little honor in being right too soon. Yet it's also a story about a senator who had the personal honor to do the right thing.

salon.com

LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER FROM HELL!!

http://www.rathergood.com/datsuns/

"In the U.K. there'd be a riot"
The passion and patience of early voters impress international observers of the U.S. election.

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By Oliver Burkeman

Nov. 2, 2004  |  MIAMI -- Justice Bekebeke is no stranger to long lines of voters at polling stations, angrily committed to making their vote count. He just never thought he would see it in Florida. "It is something phenomenal," the chief elections officer for South Africa's Northern Cape province said Monday, on a sweltering morning in downtown Miami, as the last of the early voters queued for up to three hours. "To see this passion is really something that could inspire the rest of the world."
salon.com

To put it bluntly, an inspirational election in Florida would be a best-case scenario.

Bekebeke belongs to one of two delegations of international observers who were taking up their positions across America's swing states Monday to monitor the vote for evidence of long-rumored dirty tricks: harassment of voters at the polls, illegitimate challenges to people's voter registrations and ballot fraud. "Normally we say that the kids learn from the adults, but sometimes it's those wise adults who can learn from the kids," said Bekebeke, fresh from monitoring the Rwandan election last year. "That's the spirit in which I'm here in America."

	Today's Daypass sponsored by GE Draw with friends. GE Imagination at work Imaginationcubed.com Save 50% on The Times. Entertainment, arts & more. Save 50% on The Times. Entertainment, arts & more.

Just over 100 foreign observers, mainly from Europe, are focusing their efforts on Florida, Ohio and a few other states in the face of increasingly fractious disputes, primarily over Republican plans to challenge the eligibility of newly registered voters.

The Bush campaign appeared to have suffered a defeat on that score Monday when two Ohio judges ruled that activists would not be allowed to challenge voters inside polling stations.

One of the two cases was brought by a black couple in Cincinnati who argued that the Republican plan was designed to suppress the African-American vote -- a viewpoint echoed by Jesse Jackson, who called it "Old South politics." Republicans called the decision "erroneous" and lodged an appeal. [Update: Early Tuesday a federal appeals court reversed the two lower courts' decisions, a blow to Democrats.]

The international monitors will not intervene should they witness harassment. "We do not interfere. That's a very important principle," said Urdur Gunnarsdottir, a spokeswoman for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which is sponsoring most of the observers. "What we will do is to issue a preliminary report on Thursday."

There have been certain tensions between the monitors and their host nation: Authorities in Miami-Dade County, scene of much of the recount drama in 2000, have refused to allow monitors to go within 50 feet of polling stations. Then there is the culture clash: the Greek OSCE delegation dispatched to Fort Lauderdale reportedly refused to stay in nonsmoking hotel rooms there.

But xenophobic hostility from voters themselves has been entirely absent, insisted Owen Thomas, a British monitor and chief executive of the election management firm Electoral Reform Services, brought to the U.S., like Bekebeke, by the human rights group Global Exchange. "It's quite the opposite -- they see us at the early voting sites and actively want to talk to us," said Thomas, who was struck by the patience and persistence of Florida voters. "They have to queue for hours," he said. "In the U.K. there'd be a riot."

So far, the Global Exchange monitors said, they had witnessed no improprieties. But the true test comes Tuesday. The fact that early voting sites have not been the scene of tense registration challenges between voters and party workers does not necessarily mean the election will be clean. It may be because there are so few sites open prior to the day itself: Their catchment areas are too big for activists to coordinate the information they need to challenge people successfully.

The U.S. Justice Department is dispatching more than 1,000 of its own observers around the country, including to Long Island, N.Y., as a result of a surge in Hispanic registrations there.

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http://www.empirenotes.org/fallujah.html

http://www.actionsf.org/

http://www.answerla.org/

Photos of Erik Scott Smith from Home at the End of the World, and his lovely lady Abby

Thursday November 4th at the Rainbow on Sunset Blvd West Hollywood.

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This is a COMPLETELY TREMENDOUSLY BEAUTIFUL MOVIE!!!

I saw the last hour of it tonight at the Saul Zaentz Fantasy Records Screening Room in Berkeley.


OH! MY! GOD!!

Absolutely incredible artistry-- amazing performances, bizarrely impossibly beautiful & very trippy visual effects, and very historically correct & engrossing dialog, it was HEARTPOUNDINGLY GOOD. Colin was DROP DEAD ENTHRALLINGLY STUNNING--- OH! MY!! GOD!!!!

**SPOILERS WARNING**


I didn't make it out to Berkeley till after 8pm-- I could only catch the last hour or so. I'm DYING TO SEE THE REST OF THE BEGINNING OF THIS MOVIE!!!


What I DID see starts from the scene where Alexander limps forward wearing the white see-through Persian outfit, telling his troops they are going "HOME to Macedon!" & everyone cheers-- and I watched from there through to the end, about an hour or so.


Colin BLOWS ME AWAY with how amazingly DEEP and SOULFUL and PASSIONATLY tender, then PASSIONATELY raging his Alexander is.

As his troops march toward Macedon, there's some narration that Alexander chose an unfortunate route, a mistake that cost him dearly, and countless people died along the way during the grueling long march through heat & sand. As they come closer to Macedon--narration describes he surprises his people by marrying two more wives, cemeting relations with people in towns they pass through. There's a view of the troops arriving bedraggled with an exhausted Alexander on horseback, and suspicious looking women watching unsmiling from a balcony above-- I'm not sure now if that's Roxanne & her servants or some other women-- but whoever they were-- they weren't looking happy to see him come home.

Hephaestion's death scene was phenomenally stunning in SO many ways (Jared Leto is BEAUTIFUL-- his blue eyes are so very perfect in this tearful scene, and the realtionship between him & Colin's Alexander is just so perfectly matched!!) Alexander is saying that no-- he can't really be suffereing from Typhous-- they will have children together (with their wives) and their children will play together just as they did as boys... Hephaestion lays dying in bed, and Alexander so sweetly and gently and firmly is insisting that no-- he will live, and they will go on and grow old together, go on to conquer other lands together that will pay great tribute, they will always be with each other just as they alwyas have been-- and he's crying and tears are falling down his face but he's hopeful, and reassuring, and looking out the window at the great expanse of the landscape that they dominate and which is thiers for the taking, and then he turns and discovers Hephastion is dead--and he goes intto a sudden deep shock and stunned despair. Alexander holds Hephaestion, and then the scene shifts to the outside of the room, & through closed blue doors you hear his agonizing cry. (I hope the little blip on the screen was just in the theater I was in & not part of the actual final film-- because just as that cry starts-- there's a little film sound chop that doesn't quite fit here)

Servants swarm into the room & around him, and one tries to prevent him from holding Hephastion's dead body (maybe thinking it might be contagious?)-- but Alexander fights him away & demands to see the doctor who cared for his friend. When the doctor arrives-- Alexander says-- "Execute him!!!"

Alexander goes straight to Roxanne's room where there's several women weaving-- he angrily makes the other women get up & leave, calling them "Harpies!!." He tells Roxanne that she had motive to kill Hephastion, & he grabs her throat & clenches down in a driven mad rage, about to choke her out-- and she pleads with him that she's carrying his child & makes him feel her swelling abdomen to prove it-- and he has these AMAZING flashbacks as he's choking her where Philip was attacking his mother, & he, as a child, was watching-- and then Alexander turns away from Roxanne as she's crying out that she carries his son & he imagines he hears the voice of his mother crying out against Philip, crying about having had his son at the same time Roxanne's voice in the present is crying about having Alexander's son, and he turns away from his violence & quickly sees his own adult reflection in a mirror & freaks out, then throws her to the ground-- then storms out of the room in an insane rage & tells her NEVER TOUCH ME AGAIN!!! -- and Roxanne, in agony, leans forward out the doors after him, traumatised.

Alexander in great grief over the loss of his lifelong friend and of all their hopes & dreams for a future together goes very very insane, & there's a lot of footage here that looks sort of like the Doors and Easy Rider, but SO VERY much better-- amazing visuals-- & flashbacks... He drinks wine from a large goblet at this party where everyone seems crazed & overindulgent-- he's in thick black eyeliner wearing a real lion's head pelt over his head -- and as he drinks from the cup---it looks like the lion itself is drinking the whole goblet of wine. His eyes are still full of tears and pain, and he's thinking of the death of his loved one and is really beside himself with hysterical grief, but the party revelers are doing their own Dionysian thing, wearing strange makeup & grapes & gold leaf adorning their heads--and Alexander cries out & falls-- anguished & in pain as if he's been poisoned-- though it's not quite clear what's wrong. Next-- he's hallucinating in bed near death, & there's scenes from earlier in the film where there's enormous gorgeous battles-- then green woody tangled jungles with twisting vines, and then a gigantic fiery desert rampaging cavlary charges across rolling sandswept hills -- just completely beautuful scenes-- meshed together in a tapestry of unfolding revolving kaleidoscopic images flooding together faster & faster as some scenes dissolve & some become more clear-- Alexander reaching forward watching a spinning royal banner with an eagle (or a hawk?) on it, he sees the Eagle becoming more and more real, and then he reaches forward toward his hallucination as all his bedside onlookers watch, and then it IS real and flying foward reaching out grabbing his large brown gemstone ring as Alexander holds it up as if an offering-- and it's just such a gloriously beautiful scene. Words can't completely describe-- and the Vangelis music is grand, enormous, breathtaking, lush-- perfect.



Ptolemy narrates that Alexander's heart gave out. After Alexander dies, his followers split back into warring factions, and immediately start fighting literally over the corpse-- they battle & draw swords & shout right over Alexander's body, a total blood feud. A messenger bird is sent to Olympias, & you see her sitting & writing, & then you see her hear the bird cry, & she gets up, and you see that there in her bed a snake is taking a nap, and she goes to her open doors as the bird arrives-- and it's carrying a certain kind or color of ribbon that it drops in her courtyard, which immediately on sight informs her that her son is dead-- (I'm guessing that's what the ribbon is all about-- because she undestands it's meaning that her son is dead as soon as the bird drops it) and she collapses in utter inconsolable lonely agony.

Ptolemy narrates that while Alexander did his best to conquer the world on his own not by stealing it -- but by winning it in glory--he was still doomed by the act of his mother Olympias murdering his father. No matter what he did-- he could not overcome that crime of his blood - the theft of Philip's life & kingdom by his own by his mother- even though he himself was not responsible for it. It's so heartwrenching.


The film is defintely on the level of Lord of the Rings--- grand and illuminated, with breathtaking effects. HOWEVER-- there were a few people I spoke with afterwards who felt that while Colin was Oscar-worthy amazing, Oliver's script itself was just too long, too wordy. One man said that he was shocked that while he had expected Oliver would deviate from real history, ( & he thought that would have been his main complaint--) he was more surprised that Oliver was so very historically accurate- to a fault-- that there was just too much focus on accuracy of detail. Fucking can't win huh? )So yes... expect you'll hear some long-winded dramatic expository soliloquys-- but *beep* it-- you know me! I LOVE those!!

Anthony Hopkins as Ptolemy is walking along & talking with a guy taking dictation on a little wooden board, & another guy is walking behind them carrying an ink-well as they go-- it totally looks like the scene in LOTR when Gandolf gives that looooong assed speech about the glory of their accomplishments before they go off in the boat. White robed, white haired, blue-eyed Ptolemy is saying-- Alexander's failures are better than any other man's successes. He goes on and on about how Alexander had these impossible ambitions of mixing the races-- and he expands and expounds on why those ideas were a failure-- how foolish it was for him to think that would succeed, ....yet still Artistole praises him as a great man- one who's failures are far greater than any other man's successes. He calls him "Magnus Alexandros"--- Alexander the Great. The speech is ultimately ironic on so many levels-- and makes Alexander seem so much like a man far before his own time-- and even in our own time-- I think the whole philosphy speaks volumes about what is going on in the world right now. The scenery is flat out AMAZING-- there's warships with oars & sails in the harbor behind & below Ptolemy, & it's such a breathtaking scene-- every single scene I saw was spectacularly beautiful-- there's just SO much going on all the time it'll be one of those films people go see time & time again. It's rich & colorful & complex, stirring, passionate, all that. The one and ONLY complaint I heard from any other viewers was that it was TOO historically accurate-- too MUCH information-- too weighty. There could be worse complaints really-- & I'm sure many of you will take those as compliments.

So-- Yeah there's a GREAT chance Alexander will get Best Picture-- but it kind of depends how the Academy interprets the heroic & daring artistic achievements of the film. It should definitely win multiple Oscars-- It's too amazingly complex and riveting not to. There are some strange very freaky moments-- but BECAUSE of those it's a spectacularly impressively eloquent & highly emotional epic-- a fabulously unique and prismatic experience, from what I've seen so far.

{EDIT-- I accidentally called Anthony Hopkins Aristotle the first time I wrote this-- It's fixed now... he's Ptolemy-- Sorry Anthony!! }

If you are a fan of things like Shakepeare's plays-- the way he goes into extensive dialog & imagery & symbolism-- the relationships between characters during war-- behind the scenes-- the real heart of of a man's mind-- you'll love it that some of the complicated time-consuming battles were glossed over in favor of a hugely artistic in-depth focus on people & their passions.

If you loved the weirdness, revolving points of view, & the thought processes of things like Apocalypse Now, or Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas,Lord of the Rings, Easy Rider, 9 & 1/2 Weeks, The origional Star Wars, Almost Famous, or the Thin Red Line ...you'll LOVE so much in this movie. There's so much spontaneous immediacy backed up & balanced with calming, erudite historical narration. I LOVE it!!!

I think a few middle America critics will be scared shitless. I expect ultra-conservatives & religious fundamentalists to come down on it hard as wildly sexual, messy, & confusing. I don't think they'll have the desire or the capacity to appreciate it for what it is-- It's not a care-free kind of film to watch-- it's a lot of pain & turmoil & confusion & heartbreak, and yet there is so much love & sexual intensity, loyalty & hope-- which means it's the kind of exciting date film that guarantees a hot night night between the sheets when you get home-- the cathartic kind of passionate film that makes you cling to what you love-- to think about what life's worth living for, and to value who you love by considering they may one day die before you. It IS wildly messy-- extravanagtly beautiful-- extremely radical, transcendant, empathic. This is NOT Troy 2-- it's not a harlequin romance WWE fight-fest the way Troy was. This is an Apocalypse Now, Lord of the Rings Fear & Loathing kind of thing. It's hell on wheels & I LOVE IT.

Your a double taurus!!

Sorry this is incomplete but I will send you the rest in pieces when I can, hope this helps for now!

Sun and Moon in Taurus
You were born with both the Sun and the Moon in Taurus. You are a quiet and persistent individual. You never give in to irrational impulses, unless your patience has been tried to its limits. Once you set your mind on a goal you are driven by such strong determination that you are assured of reaching it. You like clear, well-defined, solid ideas, and tangible things.
Because it is so important to you, you will acquire wealth all through your life, and your daily activities will involve handling tangible goods.
It is likely that you are a highly sensuous person, deriving much pleasure from knowledge and from the experiences of your senses. You are sociable, and able and willing to help others with their problems.
Though you possess the patience of Job, you may explode with volcanic force when you reach the limits of your patience. Since so much of your nature is placid and steady, these outbursts can wreck your inner equilibrium and should be avoided.

Ascendant in Cancer, Moon in the Eleventh House
At the time of your birth the zodiacal sign of Cancer was ascending in the horizon. Its ruler the Moon is located in the eleventh house.
Cancer is the fourth sign of the zodiacal belt and its natives are under the rulership of the Moon. Your life will be full of changes and intermittent periods of activity and relaxation. Your vulnerability to external influences makes you subconsciously imitate the manners and ways of those with whom you relate.
In many instances, circumstances will require that you play the role of worldliness and sophistication but under the mask there will exist a very sensitive human being who is easily offended, and also very perceptive of the more subtle influences and impressions, as well as of psychic vibrations.
Cancer gives the tendency to completely retreat when hurt or frightened of a situation. This happens to you often because you tend to interfere in the affairs of others when you are not needed or wanted. Throughout your life, your responses will be emotional rather than rational.
Cancer also gives a tendency for life to be centered in the home and family; your attachment to your private and domestic habits is so strong that without them you could hardly endure. In love matters, you are emotional and gentle.
For the difficult aspects we must warn you against becoming overly preoccupied with trivial details of a psychological nature. Another tendency that you have is to flatter and to criticize carelessly, without regard for the other person's feelings.
Destiny may place you in environments where your natural traits can be best expressed. You will be happier when allowed to be occupied with searching for a person or a thing, though not necessarily in important work.
The trajectory of your existence will be geared to the realization of important acquaintances and friendships.
You possess an intrinsic love for social relationships, pleasures, amusements and popular activities.
This position favors your family life and the sociable side of your nature, making you rather easy to relate to and a person who mixes easily with other people. Unfortunately, although your friends will assist you considerably in your life goals, they are not all as sincere as you would like them to be.

Venus in the Tenth House
Venus was found in the tenth house at the time of birth.
You will appear as a person who seeks harmony, inclined as you are to observe the aesthetic value of all things in life, to engage in artistic activities and to possess all that is lovely and beautiful. You have sufficient potential to achieve success in life, especially if your occupation is artistic or musical.
Much of your success is a consequence of applied interest and hard work; you posses merit and ability, and your congenial, intelligent manner produces a very exalted image.
In any case, there are very good possibilities for the acquisition of some social distinction, a good reputation and financial success at some period of your life.

Sun in the Eleventh House
The Sun was found in the eleventh house at the time of birth.
In general, this is a favorable position. Throughout your life you will receive assistance from persons occupying superior positions in life. After middle age there are strong possibilities that you will gain in reputation and esteem through relationships with people of prominence. Destiny may grant you sufficient strength of character and even opportunities to carry out your wishes to their utmost.
Spiritually, you seem to have a loyal disposition and you are straightforward and honestly oriented. You're very well aware, however, of a sense of superiority and dignity.

Moon in the Eleventh House
The Moon was found in the eleventh house at the time of your birth. You should be an individual with many friends and acquaintances, both from within and without your home and domestic circle. You are a person who can make friends in the highest social categories as well as with persons of an inferior status.
This position may also increase the possibilities of having a satisfactory family life and a very congenial domestic aspect with the potentiality of easily fraternizing with other people.

Saturn in the Eleventh House
Saturn was found in the eleventh house at the time of birth. Psychologically, this denotes a rather hidden and limited view of your personal ambitions, your friendships, and of your future. You're very ambitious, cautious, just, patient, responsible, but perhaps, too serious.
You're an individual with few friends and even there you may find that some of them will assist you with advice rather than with actual help in times of peril.
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________________________________________
for Nikola (female)
born on 26 April 1971 local time 10:18 am
in Orange County, CA (US) U.T. 17:18
119w19, 36n37 sid. time 23:36:57
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Planetary positions
planet sign degree house motion
Sun Taurus 05°49'30 11 direct
Moon Taurus 27°11'25 11 direct
Mercury Aries 24°54'27 10 retrograde
Venus Aries 03°41'16 10 direct
Mars Capricorn 26°13'07 07 direct
Jupiter Sagittarius 04°42'19 05 retrograde
Saturn Taurus 23°16'21 11 direct
Uranus Libra 10°30'25 04 retrograde
Neptune Sagittarius 02°23'52 05 retrograde
Pluto Virgo 27°25'28 04 retrograde
True Node Aquarius 20°22'35 08 retrograde

House positions (Placidus)
Ascendant Cancer 11°33'41
2nd House Leo 02°14'14
3rd House Leo 25°16'52
Imum Coeli Virgo 23°43'19
5th House Libra 29°05'40
6th House Sagittarius 07°25'10
Descendant Capricorn 11°33'41
8th House Aquarius 02°14'14
9th House Aquarius 25°16'52
Medium Coeli Pisces 23°43'19
11th House Aries 29°05'40
12th House Gemini 07°25'10

Major aspects
Sun Quincunx Jupiter 1°07
Sun Sextile Ascendant 5°44
Moon Sextile Venus 6°30
Moon Trine Mars 0°58
Moon Opposition Jupiter 7°31
Moon Conjunction Saturn 3°55
Moon Opposition Neptune 5°12
Moon Trine Pluto 0°14
Mercury Square Mars 1°19
Mercury Quincunx Pluto 2°31
Venus Trine Jupiter 1°01
Venus Trine Neptune 1°17
Mars Trine Saturn 2°57
Mars Trine Pluto 1°12
Jupiter Sextile Uranus 5°48
Jupiter Conjunction Neptune 2°18
Saturn Trine Pluto 4°09
Uranus Square Ascendant 1°03
Neptune Sextile Pluto 4°58

here you go more, i did it quick, because I know I am gonna be super busy this weekend and may not finish it so!

hope it helps and remember you have free will to change your life regardless!
Cancer Rising makes you ambitious and dedicated, but deceptively vulnerable. You are cautious and not inclined to make the first move until you are sure of your ground. Unfortunately, you seem to attract unsuitable partners and may even be subject to a somewhat traumatic marriage. Your tendency is to marry late in life, and to seek older or more mature partners, or those who represent an authority figure.

You view everything through an emotional glaze, my dears and though you try to hide your vulnerability behind a tough front, this does not fool anyone for long. Be that as it may, you do not usually allow emotional vulnerability to interfere with your ambitions and you have considerable personal magnetism. That emotional commitment makes you work twice as hard as anyone else and generally leads to success. You love to spend time at home and could be successful in any home-based enterprise.

Ruled by the silvery moon, you have a changeable personality, although you can be quite caring and sympathetic when your nurturing instincts are stimulated. You like to be "mothered" and may be guided in life by a strong person (usually female). Consciously or subconsciously you respond to the influence of others, even adopting the latest fashions or modes of behaviour whether or not they really suit you or express your deeper character. A tendency to undertake those activities, or studies which appear to improve social standing should be carefully watched, especially when these activities are not actually enjoyable in themselves, nor in keeping with your real inclinations. You are instinctively good with the public and have an affinity with children.

You are a natural cook, and possess strong design or architectural ability, or at least take great interest in them. Roundness of face, pale, sensitive skin, and baldness or finely textured hair are characteristics of Cancer Rising. The old bod has a strong tendency to retain water, and your emotional orientation (water=emotion) reveals an addictive nature. You seem to attract excess weight - and addictive substances. You can even be addicted to people. Breasts, stomach, and digestive system are vulnerable areas.
With sensual Taurus, the Bull, as your star sign, the Sun shone through an earth sign on your birthday. The Sun in astrology stands for your inner nature, the stamp of your true character. The second sign of the Zodiac, Taurus is ruled by Venus, the planet of love and desire. A fixed (strong and solid) sign, Taurus governs practicality and security. It is a feminine sign and very magnetic.
Practical, reliable Taureans are great lovers of sensual pleasures, although you do tend to be rather stubborn, possessive and conservative. Firmly anchored in the material world, you have a fine grasp of what is needed in order to lead the good life. Of course, you are capable in emergencies, where you have an instinctive understanding of what to do, but under normal circumstances, no-one can force you into anything without due time for thought and consideration.
Tactile and Sensuous
Tactile and sensuous, you have a nose for personal comfort and physical pleasure. You are nevertheless quite pragmatic, with a good appreciation for the financial values as well as any aesthetic qualities. Taurus loves nature and natural things, but due to a fondness for comfort and ease, the Bull can be quite lazy. To preserve your health, you need to take some regular exercise and control that tendency to overindulge in rich foods and the other pleasures in life.
Taureans are very strong-willed and often quite creative. The Moon is exalted in Taurus, giving success with matters to do with the public and, combined with the influence of Venus, a passionate nature endowed with a strong sense of loyalty and fidelity. You are kind and generous with friends, with whom you develop an unspoken rapport.
Love of Music
Taurus rules the throat, giving a powerful, often beautiful voice. The influence of Venus opens up a world of musical talent and appreciation, so Taureans are good singers and musicians, or at least, love music and can be a force on the business side of music.
You also like to potter around the garden, and delight in other outdoor activities: picnics, hikes, trips to botanical gardens or the zoo. You tend to be rather subdued, but you have a fine sense of humour, and enjoy your social life.
Hunky Taurus is physically strong and solidly built. Many of you favour weight lifting or other body-building routines to keep in shape and you enjoy sports requiring strength and endurance. Health issues are often focused on problems to do with the throat and neck, or by polarity with the reproductive organs, the kidneys and so on. Taurus is naturally lazy and tends to overindulge, so a good approach to health and wellbeing would include a well-planned regime of disciplined exercise and diet.
Taurus colours are brown, russet, and turquoise. The beautiful emerald, a rare variety of the mineral beryl and as costly as a diamond, is your birthstone. The emerald's rich green color is quite appropriate too, since it is the color of money, lush countryside and relaxation. Geometrically, the emerald takes the shape of a six-sided crystal and six is the number of love. Flowers for Taurus are the red rose, daisy, lily, and daffodil.
Sun in the Eleventh House: if not afflicted, would mean, among other things, that you should get along well with Leo Sun sign folks, or at least with those who have strong Leo emphasis in their charts. Friends would tend to be showy and attention seekers.Your hopes and wishes would tend to be a little grand as well. If you have this placement, you should work well with groups, unless, of course, other factors interfere (such as Saturn sitting here with the Sun). if not afflicted, would mean, among other things, that you should get along well with Leo Sun sign folks, or at least with those who have strong Leo emphasis in their charts. Friends would tend to be showy and attention seekers.Your hopes and wishes would tend to be a little grand as well. If you have this placement, you should work well with groups, unless, of course, other factors interfere (such as Saturn sitting here with the Sun). if not afflicted, would mean, among other things, that you should get along well with Leo Sun sign folks, or at least with those who have strong Leo emphasis in their charts. Friends would tend to be showy and attention seekers.Your hopes and wishes would tend to be a little grand as well. If you have this placement, you should work well with groups, unless, of course, other factors interfere (such as Saturn sitting here with the Sun).
Moon in the Eleventh House: Moody, emotional friends. Isn’t everybody moody and emotional on occasion? If you have the Moon here, your friends can be described as being NOT moody only on occasion. On the positive side, they can be very nurturing to you in times of stress. Frequently though, it is you who has to be nurturing to them. Try to keep you hopes and wishes from fluctuating too much.
Saturn in the Eleventh House: No, this does not mean you won’t have any friends. They may be fewer in number, but that is probably because you are selective here. Additionally, they will tend to be older by at least seven years. If you have this placement, you probably had older friends when you were a kid. You are the one that has to really work for those hopes and wishes, and you will probably envy those who have Jupiter in the eleventh house. Don’t. By sticking to your game plan (putting in extra effort and leaving nothing to chance) you can actually come out way ahead of them. Remember the old story about the grasshopper and the ant
Mercury in the Tenth House: means that communications or transportation will be a central part of the career. This would be a good placement for a writer, a public speaker, a salesperson, a TV or radio newscaster, or even cabdrivers and truck drivers, this means that communications or transportation will be a central part of the career.
Venus in the Tenth House: simply makes you look good, whatever you do. The danger is that you will look like you can deliver a better performance than you are able to. Traditional Venus occupations come under the headings of beauty, art, charm, and the social graces. The profession of artist is included, but so is art dealer and art museum worker. Beauty takes in beautician as well as those who work in factories producing beauty products. This includes all finery, jewelry, fancy clothing, etc. The social graces covers anything doing with public relations as well as people who plan social events for a living.
Neptune in the Fifth House: Neptune is where we can do ourselves in, where we wear rose-colored glasses to hide the drabness of mere reality. People with this placement are always thinking that they have found their "soul mate". It’s usually a heel. There is also a tendency to fall in love with someone because of their faults instead of their virtues. "Oh you poor little thing. I know you’re and alcoholic, a drug addict, a con artist, tri-sexual, and crippled, but let me fall in love with you and make you all better". If that sounds like you, let me give you a magic number that will solve all of your problems in this area. Please memorize it. It’s 911. Dial that and have them taken away and treated by a professional. Neptune here can be very creative in the arts. There is an increased chance of adopting a child if you have this placement. A natural first child will be on the dreamy and imaginative side.
Jupiter in the Fifth House: tends to be omnivorous. Oscar Wilde had this one. No, it doesn’t make you gay. It just means more of everything. You feel confident wherever Jupiter is, and that frequently leads one to expand. In the fifth house, that means confidence in romance, creative endeavors, and gambling. There is a danger of feeling so overconfident that you take one risk too many. Wilde did. The Uranus in the Fourth House: There will probably be something unusual about the home.. The early home life may have involved more than the normal amount of sudden shifts. Daddy was very independent, brilliant, or just plain crazy. Your home will have to have eccentric touches that make visitors take notice, or the latest electronic gadgets. One of my clients with this placement had a chair that had two large pieces of butcher block for "arms" and a transparent Plexiglas center. The older you get, the more likely you are to have strange opinions that shock everyone, but you won’t care what they think.
first child (if any) will tend to be a jovial, fiery type.
Pluto in the Fourth House: Don’t mess with Daddy. He may have been strong to the point of being overwhelming. Pluto shows where we can regenerate when we are hurt or drained. Go home to recharge. At the same time, home may be a place of power struggles. If you ever have a disagreement with someone, ask them to come over to your place to discuss it. They will give way on point after point. You can be strong at home. The older you get, the more likely it will be that the power of your personality increases (except for the very end, of course).
Mars in the Seventh House: gives an active, aggressive partner. Watch out for arguments. As long as they have plenty to do, everything tends to be fine. It they get bored, well, Mars will create a diversion. Conversely, you yourself may become more active and aggressive after marriage

North Node in Aquarius: If you have this one, your job is to cut down on your own self expression and do something to help other people with theirs. That Leo South Node makes you want to act like the king or queen of the hill. What you really have to do is act like a wise and gentle monarch who spends all their time taking care of their subjects. Aquarius, like all Air signs, is concerned with relationships. In this case, it’s friendship. More than most people, you will find yourself in situations where you need a friend. A big necessity for you is to build friendships. Even more, you have to concentrate on being a friend.
Aquarius is also the sign of genius, showing the need to be original no matter how much controversy gets stirred up.
Ceres in Sagittarius: My Ceres is here. Knowledge, wisdom, and adventure are the nurturers here. This placement can make you feel nurtured while on long journeys. If you are intellectually inclined, you could get that nurturing feeling through giving advice to people or by teaching or instructing them in some way. Reading about abstract philosophical topics could have the same effect. You can also make other people feel nurtured or inspired by giving them advice or instruction.
Pallas in Scorpio: A really good placement for a therapist, detective, spy, or criminal! Scorpio loves to go deep into the underworld and come back with riches. If there is a subtle, secretive way of solving a problem, you will be the one to find it. Pallas in Scorpio can also make you obsessed with finding solutions to problems, or figuring out a secret and obscure pattern. Of course, it is also good at finding the best way to heal and rehabilitate, and is excellent for helping others manage their money and resources. If the rest of the chart agrees, there will also be the potential for changing the values of any group that you belong to, including the society in which you live
Juno in Sagittarius: The partner will tend to come from an entirely different background and may even be a foreigner. Even if the partner is not a Sagittarian, they may have Sagittarian traits.Your mate may be interested in languages, sports and humour. They may be involved in higher education or take frequent long trips, and they may talk a lot and listen only a little (if at all).
Vesta in Leo: focuses on creativity and self-expression. Good for focusing on the dramatic or creative side of any situation.
Chiron in Aries: Aries is the sign of selfhood and with Chiron here the sense of self may be weakened. that sometimes the person feels as if they don't exist and have to take their sense of identity from others. You may feel abandoned or a loner, especially neglect by a mother . You feel you are not worthy of your body or your appearance. By helping others you may help yourself.

Amanda Byram.

http://lifeaquatic.movies.go.com/main.html

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362270/

Plot Outline: With a plan to exact revenge on a mythical shark that killed his partner, oceanographer Steve Zissou (Murray) rallies a crew that includes his estranged wife (Huston), a journalist (Blanchett), and a man who may or may not be his son (Wilson). (view trailer)

http://blubberybastard.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?from=20040611

Anybody catch Saturday Night Live last night? 

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Colin as Bono:  http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2004573218,00.html

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Colin on Alexander::

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Alexander used Greece to beat off the Persian Army.  He spread their flanks and rammed the head of his Phalanx in, and after hours & hours of pounding away, a raging torrent of  Greek seamen would erupt into the Persian rear.

:)

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Awesome Review:  http://myweb.unomaha.edu/~jreameszimmerman/Beyond_Renault/review2.html

http://www.colinfarrellfansite.org/viewtopic.php?t=256&start=345

I really loved the book. I saw a man who was very broken and very sad, trying to build up his self-esteem by clinging to fantasies of granduer to pull him out of his self-loathing, poverty, and failures. I found it very sad and sweet and profound. He's always saying one thing, but thinking & doing another-- a very frustrated puppy.

He fights with the girl he loves in a very needy, childish tantrum throwing way-- and it's not the way I'd want a lover to act with me, but I can be sympathetic to why he's so tortured, & he comes off as very mean only when he's hurting inside & afriad of rejection, angry at himself, & feeling like he's lost or being teased. I thought it was a deeply sad & funny & twisted book about a man's failings & obsessions & dreams.

Oyster Boy Review 9: Vermont:  Home of Lousy Sex

By Lucinda Ebersole

Iris knew as each day passed that she was getting too old for men and Yankees but she kept getting involved with them anyway. Often she would sit down and say to herself in a voice that was reminiscent of her mother's voice,

"Iris, you are too old for men and Yankees. Find yourself a nice woman. A woman from Mississippi or Georgia. A woman who can fry chicken and cook cornbread."

This time, Iris was ready to listen.

Iris sold most everything she owned, including that big polar fleece coat that made her look like a balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. She had everything she owned packed into her baby blue 1970 VW bus she bought in Durham four years earlier. Iris was headed south. Just one final shift at the restaurant and she would be on her way to Pensacola. Iris liked the way it sounded, sunny and warm. Pensacola. In Pensacola there would be lots of waitress jobs for a girl with her experience and lots of women. Southern women with dark tans and warm hearts. Women who could fry chicken and make cornbread.

Iris handed the menu to the man in the booth. He looked up at her name tag. "I love girls named after flowers," he said.

Iris smiled and thought, 3,426. Three-thousand four-hundred and twenty-six was the number of times men in New York City had made some flower remark about her name. This guy was just like 99% of those guys. If any one of them had been captured by a crazed, gun toting crack addict and forced into a florist and asked to explain the difference between an iris and a chrysanthemum, every last one of them would have ended up with their brains splattered all over the refrigerator walls. Still, for some unexplained reason, they loved to mention the fact that they knew an iris is a flower.

Iris never told one of them the truth about her name. Actually, Iris was named after her granddaddy's favorite hunting dog. Just after she was born, he showed up at the hospital to see his new granddaughter. He took one look at her and said, "Hell, look at the tuft of hair sitting on top of her head. She looks like my coon dog, Iris!" The name kind of stuck.

"I'm, Chad," he said as he looked at the menu.

"I bet you're from New Jersey," Iris said as she thought to herself, "Chad," what kind of a name is "Chad." I'd rather be named after a dog than be named Chad.

"I bet you're not," Chad said. "I'll just bet you're from down in the bayou."

Chad said bayou in two distinct syllables. Buy. You. The sad part, Iris thought, was that Chad really believed he was being clever. Iris smiled. "Close," she said and she told him the special of the day was roast beef.

"I'm a vegetarian," Chad said.

Iris looked at him. A man. A Yankee. A vegetarian. Three strikes and you're out. But there was just something about him. Iris listened hard for that voice that sounded like her mother. That voice that said,

"Iris, find yourself a nice woman. A nice woman who fries chicken and eats it."

But there was just something a little bit wicked about Chad.

Chad wanted the house salad with the honey-dijon on the side. He said it twice. On the side. He was adamant that if the dressing was on the salad he would send it back. He wanted no crackers. Crackers in restaurants were made with animal oil. He only ate crackers that had been made with pure vegetable oil, and they were not the kind of crackers that restaurants served. He wanted bread instead of crackers. Whole wheat bread.

Chad wanted the linguini with vegetables if the sauce was not a cream sauce. Iris was asked to make sure that no milk went into the sauce for the vegetable linguini. Also, he needed to know what kind of vegetables were in the vegetable linguini. He did not want an abundance of broccoli. Restaurants cooked broccoli until it was mush. Broccoli was supposed to be slightly steamed. It was supposed to be al dente, like pasta. No chef would cook his pasta until it was mushy, so why did they insist on cooking the broccoli until it was mush. Iris shrugged her shoulders.

Chad said he really wanted iced tea but he had seen a report on the news that said iced tea in restaurants was often contaminated. He also said that iced tea was often made with a tea mix that was like Kool-aid. He never ordered Kool-aid in a restaurant so why should he order tea from a mix. He asked her to check and see if the lemonade was fresh or if it was from a mix like the Kool-aid tea. By the time Iris was finished taking his order, she had enough notes for a dissertation.

All Iris could think about was getting on the road and heading her VW south. That and Chad. For some reason Iris couldn't get Chad out of her mind, the way a popcorn husk sticks between your teeth. Not a pain, not at all a pleasure, just a constant feeling of bother. Iris grew increasingly upset that Chad was leaving her bothered and hot. Chad picked at his food. Iris knew that men who picked at their food were lousy in bed. Iris knew vegetarians were lousy in bed. And through an extensive process of trial and error, Iris knew that most men and Yankees were lousy in bed. Of course there were always exceptions.

Chad continued to make inane iris jokes and Iris tried not to respond, but when Chad paid the check and refused to let go of the twenty until Iris told him what time she got off, she capitulated. It was New York City and Iris was entitled one last fling. At the end of her shift, Iris surrendered her apron, pulled a paper bag out of the giant refrigerator with the remains of the steak from the farewell dinner the night before. She saw a giant mound of ground beef for the meatloaf special that she would no longer be recommending and pinched off a small ball of the mangled meat and cupped it in her hand before sticking it in her brown bag. She stuffed the bag into the pocket of her jeans jacket with the wad of tips and she stepped out the back door and walked up the alley and back to the corner where Chad was propped on a mailbox.

Chad gave Iris a rose and told her, "A rose is a rose is an iris." He winked. Iris believed it was possible to be that corny and pull it off. Iris believed that Gertrude Stein could have pulled it off, but coming from Chad, it was just stupid. He said he had some beer at home, so Chad and Iris and the rose made their way up the four flight of stairs to his apartment. On the wall was a giant PETA poster of a vivisected monkey. Iris ceased being hot and bothered and was now just bothered. Chad gave her a beer and told her it was from Ceylon. It might have worked with tea, but with beer it was lame.

Chad had an old iron bed that doubled as a couch. Actually, Iris believed that Chad never had any intentions of using the bed as a couch, but she played along flipping at the corner of the covers to reveal Star Trek sheets. Iris took a swallow of beer and smiled at Chad who, she now knew beyond a reasonable doubt, was a lousy fuck.

Chad reached over and tried to kiss her but Iris resisted. "Let's play a game," she said. "I'll be the evil veterinarian and you be my research monkey."

The very mention of the word "game" gave Chad a hard-on. He produced a fine skein of thick hemp rope, threw off his clothes, and began hopping about doing his best monkey improv. How typical Iris thought, at the first chance to get laid the little poseur would sell out his simian brothers. He would never think of eating a monkey but he saw nothing wrong with indulging a little vivisection role play.

The evil veterinarian tied the naughty research monkey to his Star Trek sheets. Iris went into the kitchen to get another beer. His refrigerator was a disgusting display of misplaced nutrition. There was spongy tofu and crusty lentils. Every other recognizable food item was from Vermont. Iris was suddenly glad that she had never made it to Vermont. With food like this, Iris though, they should change the state motto to "Vermont: Home of Lousy Sex." She opened a cabinet or two and found no grits. Chad continued to make monkey sounds. Iris was just about to leave when she remembered the brown bag in her pocket.

Iris opened the drawer and pulled out a sharp knife. Removing the bag she unwrapped the leftover steak. The rare meat sat in a pool of its own blood. Iris lifted the cold steak and sliced it into thin strips. While she sliced she said in a loud voice, "That monkey is too noisy, he will have to be punished." Then she said, "You're eating this up, aren't you Chad."

Chad said, "You bet my evil vet."

He laughed.

Iris laughed as she threw the dish towel over Chad's eyes and straddled his body. She lifted the tin foil that cupped the juice from the steak. "Open your mouth, monkey boy, and take your medicine," she said as she poured the blood into Chad's eager mouth. He coughed.

"What the fuck was that," he said tossing his head to remove the dish towel just as the sliver of rare steak fell into his mouth.

"It's my experiment to turn the rare tofu monkey into a carnivore," Iris said as she tried to hold his jaws together. Chad managed to spit the meat out.

"Now Chad, if you'd told me you were a spitter and not a swallower I never would have come up here."

"Let me go you bitch."

"Chad, that is no way to talk to the evil veterinarian. Now open up."

Chad clenched his jaws and fought at the ropes, but Iris was from Alabama and she knew a thing or two about tying rope. There was no way Chad was getting loose without her help. He continued to fight which only made Iris more determined to make him a carnivore. Iris held his chin between her knees.

"Open up, monkey boy. My Nobel prize is riding on this experiment." But Chad refused. Iris took a bit of the ground beef that had grown warm in her pocket and smeared it on his lips, but Chad wouldn't budge. Iris took another bit of the ground beef and rolled it into a ball. "You're making this experiment way too hard, Chad," she said as she tore the ball in two and stuffed the meaty marbles up his nose.

"Fuck you, bitch," he shouted as Iris tossed steak into his mouth. He spit and then he began to cry. Unchewed meat littered his pillow and damp bits of ground beef hung from his nose. Iris climbed off his body and sat on the edge of the bed. She felt like a real bully. How could she expect a guy from New Jersey who slept on Star Trek sheets and only ate fruits and vegetables to hold his own against her.

"I'm sorry, Chad," she said as she untied his left hand, "but you just can't let an absolute stranger come into your house and tie you up. It's insane."

- - - -

Chad grabbed her arm and twisted it. "You fucking bitch," he screamed as Iris easily pulled away from him. She went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator and took out the last two beers.

"Mind if I take your last beer, Chad? And just for your own edification, '33' is a Vietnamese beer. There is no Ceylon anymore. It's Sri Lanka now."

- - - -

With that, Iris opened the door and walked into the hall. She hurried out onto the street and ducked into the alley where her VW was parked and headed for the Holland Tunnel.

In New Jersey she thought of Chad. He never told her exactly where in New Jersey he was from. She stuck her Patsy Cline tape into the deck. The tape was old and stretched, and by the time Patsy sang "Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray," she sounded more like Tom Waites after a valium overdose. The clock in the van said 11:47 P.M.. Iris believed if she kept a heavy foot on the gas pedal, by dawn she would be in South Carolina. She dreamed of pulling into a shabby diner and flirting with a waitress who never dreamed of being anything else. A waitress with generous thighs and voice like spun honey. A waitress who would bring her grits and biscuits with sausage gravy. A waitress who would ask her name and say, "Honey, I got a huntin' dog named Iris."

http://www.playingsafely.co.uk/12stisofchristmas/12-STIs.html

LOL!!!

http://www.illwillpress.com/xmess.html

Amen!

_________________
RED CROSS https://www.redcross.org/donate/donation-form.asp
CARE http://www.care.org/
UNICEF http://www.supportunicef.org/site/pp.asp?c=iuI1LdP0G&b=276341 

IN Hawaiii-- this instant an earthquake hits off the coast-- everyone runs for the hills... LONG before any tidal wave comes.  WHAT HAPPENED??  It was HOURS after the quake before the wave hit... WHY DID NO ONE KNOW???!!!!!

http://us.rediff.com/news/2004/dec/28dilip.htm

Early Morning, Early Warning

December 28, 2004



--
Death Ends Fun: http://dcubed.blogspot.com
Dilip D'Souza

Are early warnings possible? I have no idea, but chew on this: the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Los Angeles detected the quake that caused these killer waves, at least an hour before they hit Thailand and Malaysia. They issued an alert for the Pacific countries, their mandated area of concern.

It's not as if they then sat back and twiddled their thumbs. But here's what Charles McCreery, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Honolulu, had to say about this one hour, about the possibility of warning the other countries in the region. "We tried to do what we could," he began, but "we don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world."

Is the world that disconnected?

Directory inquiry, or a Google search, would have unearthed the numbers of consulates, embassies, offices, agencies; besides, in this webbed and celled age, it is impossible to believe that nobody at the NOAA and/or the PTWC knew anybody in "that part of the world."

Death in a churchyard 

At Marina, sea is calm as if nothing happened

One hour, or even a few, is not a whole lot of time. But yes, in these webbed and celled times, it seems like enough to: find some numbers, make some calls, get the word down to those coastal areas, get one word -- "Run!" -- into at least a few people's heads, who would then alert others as they ran. Sure, perhaps panic would set in, but if that panic drove people out of their homes to save ground... I'm all for panic instead of deaths.

Yes, it's hard to believe that all the deaths could have been averted. But it's not hard to believe that some might have been. After all, one life saved would have been worth the effort to get over the obstacle of a blank address book.

Why did McCreery, his NOAA and other agencies not make that effort? I have no idea.

But having wondered that, you also realise: even if they had done so, one hour, or a few, would have been the extent of the early warning. In that time, you've got to get the word out, persuade people it is a credible warning, and hope they are left with enough time to run to safety. Even with systems in place, even with panic, is it enough?

So is the answer that we must simply be fatalistic about these disasters, accept that they will happen and kill some of us, and there's little to be done except offer relief afterwards? Surely not. Because after all, one life saved would have been worth the effort to make good use of that one hour. Worth the effort to install and maintain warning systems and shelters up and down those coasts. Surely.

And yet the real early warning lies in some larger measures. It's in being prepared for such calamities to begin with. Install systems, maintain them, yes. Move from there to ensuring that nobody lives in exposed coastal areas unless they are in homes that can withstand disaster, or at least offer a measure of protection. Move from there to policies that address our most vulnerable people -- the poor who must live like this -- first. A country without the wide gap between rich and poor that India has, it seems to me, would not have had so many die. A country that forces its poor to scrabble to live on exposed shores, on the edge of filthy drains, at the outer fringes of our consciousness, is a country that will see thousands dead in future catastrophes like this.

'I have never seen anything like this'

After all, powerful cyclones often hit the US coast, there have been killer quakes there. Deaths happen in these disasters, but at worst, they number in the dozens. (The 1989 California quake, a great calamity that still causes shudders in that state, killed 63). Never in the thousands, as in India. Why the difference?

The Tsunami Tragedy: Complete Coverage

It's a question that, especially after spending time in Orissa after the 1999 cyclone and Kutch after the 2001 quake, I often agonise over. I had an answer then, as I think I have now. And it leaves me with the sinking feeling that the next disaster here, and the ones after that, will indeed kill by the thousand as well, and not only because early warning systems are not in place.

They will kill like that because we have so many poor people who live vulnerable lives in vulnerable homes that are in vulnerable places. They will kill because, in a very real sense, that fact about our poor doesn't really matter to us at all. They themselves don't really matter.

And thus the real early warning system, the truly effective long-term one, lies in turning that attitude around. In setting national priorities, our country's policies, to address first and always the most vulnerable among us. To ensure that they live in greater security. Assure our citizens that much, and you can be sure that that alone will make the next calamity less deadly.

But, of course, that's for the future. For now, it's time to tackle this tragedy. A useful place to find out what's happening and how you can help is here.

Tsunami blog coverage: updates

Rohit Gupta, Jon Lebkowsky, and Dina Mehta at the Worldchanging.com blog have just published a roundup of first-person accounts, aid site urls, and news reports related to the tsunami disaster in Asia. They say this post will be updated regularly, so you can bookmark and return for fresh info as it comes. Link. Joe Gandelman posts another comprehensive roundup here, on his "Moderate Voice" blog: Link.

Wikipedia is also maintaining coverage in a richly linked, well-organized web page with ongoing updates. Link. And Wikipedia Commons offers related media (photos, data animations, and the like): Link (Thanks, Nick Douglas)

Loic Le Meur tells BoingBoing, "On Philsland, a French blogger writes of having been alerted by e-mail three hours before the tsunamis hit the coasts. An earthquake alert was issued by the USGS center three hours before it hit -- we could have saved thousands of people's lives if information had moved faster. This blogger was informed by the alert (Link, in French), and I also talk about it here (Link, in English)."

Image: snapshot from Phuket. Link. Another gallery of "citizen photojournalist" images here: Link.

Previous BB posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:12:20 PM permalink | Other blogs commenting on this post

Quote from Tucker

PLEDGE A PRESENT FOR TSUNAMI VICTIMS

 I've been watching the news about the Tsunami over the last few days (who hasn't), the plight of these people is terrible and I guess (being a new dad)the image that struck me most was a guy wading through the water with his baby in his arms.

So like most of you I'm sure (or at least I would hope) - I have been down to the bank and paid in to the fund - But I wondered if I could do more.

It's my birthday in a couple of weeks and the wife asked me what I wanted, maybe Halo 2 for my X box? or some new after shave?

Then I got to thinking, I had a good christmas, and in truth I do not really need anything. What do I normally get for my birthday ? usually bits and pieces of small stuff, maybe a CD, a DVD or 20 quid ($38) from some old aunt I haven't seen in ages.

I actually don't need any of this sort of stuff, and If I do need it - I can afford to buy it anyway.

So I rang up all the people who normally send me things and said "You know what, this year for my birthday, instead of buying me something - pay it into the disater fund"

This is a win- win situation I feel good because I'm making an altruistic gesture (and it doesn't cost me anything (just for the true capitalists out there)), My friends and family are cool with it because that's my birthday present sorted and they don't have to worry about it.

The best thing about it is, that many of them have said, "what a good idea, whilst I'm down there I'll stick some money in of my own - and I'm going to ask people to do the same with MY birthday present"

So if you want to help - I'm not suggesting that you give up all your birthday presents, but just one of them - you'll never miss it anyway.

So I implore you - if you think this is a good idea - ring that relative up TODAY and ask them to do the same for you, and don't just stop there - E-mail your friends and tell them what you are doing and ask them to do the same.

It's like a snowball effect - I've already had a few emails telling me that hundreds of pounds are going to be paid in that otherwise may not have been (due to the amount of people that are now giving to the disaster fund instead of buying a few pairs of socks). And if the same message gets passed on, then hundreds if not thousands more will be raised.

If you wish to get involved with this - just reply to this link

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0361596/board/thread/14420003

(just so I can keep a count)

AND PLEDGE A PRESENT,once we have a few hundred replies, maybe each of us could go to the press in our respective countries and say "Look what we've started, would you like your readers to get involved too"

By the way it doesn't have to stop on this particular board, go to other baords, copy and paste this appeal and then post the link for those people to PLEGDE A PRESENT on this thread.

It would be a real nice thing to look back on, and say "- you know I was posting on a BB once and we started something that made life better for people on the other side of the planet"

Thanks For Listening

And a Happy New Year to you all

Tucker

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=haarp+tsunami

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/6583/project148.html

HAARP Boils the Upper Atmosphere

Meteorites & Meteors hit Indonesia & Sri Lanka in Decemeber before Indian Ocean Earthquake of 2004 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0932813534/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-6146597-4663353#reader-page

Nostradamus predicated a massive tidal wave in the year 2004-- the year of the Olympic games in Greece.  He saw a great comet from the sky causing the earth to move, creating a massive mega tidal wave.    I don't know how may kooks are with me on this-- but hey... if it's possible to see the future... would Nostradamus confuse a comet with HAARP?

Here's info from one of those kook Nostradamus sites... written before the earthquake and tidal wave... 

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread40021/pg1

"III/3: An Arrow to 2004

Mars and Mercury, and the silver (moon) joined together, towards the midi (south France) extreme dryness. In the bed of Asia one will say the earth trembles; Corinth, and Ephesus then in perplexity.

Mars et Mercure, et l'argent joint ensemble,
Vers le midi extreme siccité:
Au fond d'Asie on dira terre tremble,
Corinthe, Ephese lors en perplexité.

As already seen, the comet of Nostradamus strikes home in the Aegean between Corinth and Ephesus. The dryness refers to the heat effect of the comet as it passes over southern France. The trembling of the earth hints at more than just the explosion of the comet; its impact evidently triggers an earthquake, likely in quake-prone Turkey. Most significant though, the astronomical alignment in this verse occurs in only one of the three years prescribed by Future Quatrain VIII-2, page 12-about August 19, 2004. This then is the designated year of the cataclysm

VIII/16: Tidal Wave! - (Euboea Again)

At the place where Jason had his ship built, there will be a flood so great and so sudden that one will have no place or fall upon. The waves to mount Olympian "Fesula."

Au lieu que HIESON fait sa nef fabriquer,
Si grand déluge sera et si subite,
Qu'on n'aura lieu ni terre s'attaquer,
L'onde monter Fesulan Olympique.

The Greek legendary hero, Jason, had his ship built just north of the island of Euboea at Iolcus on the Gulf of Vólos, the very area where Nostradamus says the millennial comet will impact. So the verse is forecasting that a colossal tidal wave will be generated by the comet's explosion, flooding the nearby plain. Fesulan is evidently modern-day Farsala, which is a full twenty miles inland from the gulf, so the magnitude of the destructive wave will be far greater than any in recorded history. The verse leaves little question that this comet will be many times the size of the one that hit Siberia in 1908. "

http://www.haarp.net/

Put simply, the apparatus for HAARP is a reversal of a radio telescope; antenna send out signals instead of receiving. HAARP is the test run for a super-powerful radiowave-beaming technology that lifts areas of the ionosphere by focusing a beam and heating those areas. Electromagnetic waves then bounce back onto earth and penetrate everything -- living and dead.

HAARP publicity gives the impression that the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program is mainly an academic project with the goal of changing the ionosphere to improve communications for our own good. However, other U.S. military documents put it more clearly -- HAARP aims to learn how to "exploit the ionosphere for Department of Defense purposes." Communicating with submarines is only one of those purposes.

Press releases and other information from the military on HAARP continually downplay what it could do. Publicity documents insist that the HAARP project is no different than other ionospheric heaters operating safely throughout the world in places such as Arecibo, Puerto Rico, Tromso, Norway, and the former Soviet Union. However, a 1990 government document indicates that the radio-frequency (RF) power zap will drive the ionosphere to unnatural activities.

If the military, in cooperation with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, can show that this new ground-based "Star Wars" technology is sound, they both win. The military has a relatively-inexpensive defense shield and the University can brag about the most dramatic geophysical manipulation since atmospheric explosions of nuclear bombs. After successful testing, they would have the military megaprojects of the future and huge markets for Alaska's North Slope natural gas.

Looking at the other patents which built on the work of a Texas' physicist named Bernard Eastlund, it becomes clearer how the military intends to use the HAARP transmitter. It also makes governmental denials less believable. The military knows how it intends to use this technology, and has made it clear in their documents. The military has deliberately misled the public, through sophisticated word games, deceit and outright disinformation.

The military says the HAARP system could:

• Give the military a tool to replace the electromagnetic pulse effect of atmospheric thermonuclear devices (still considered a viable option by the military through at least 1986)

• Replace the huge Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) submarine communication system operating in Michigan and Wisconsin with a new and more compact technology

• Be used to replace the over-the-horizon radar system that was once planned for the current location of HAARP, with a more flexible and accurate system

• Provide a way to wipe out communications over an extremely large area, while keeping the military's own communications systems working

• Provide a wide area earth-penetrating tomography which, if combined with the computing abilities of EMASS and Cray computers, would make it possible to verify many parts of nuclear nonproliferation and peace agreements

• Be a tool for geophysical probing to find oil, gas and mineral deposits over a large area

• Be used to detect incoming low-level planes and cruise missiles, making other technologies obsolete

Two Alaskans put it bluntly. A founder of the NO HAARP movement, Clare Zickuhr, says "The military is going to give the ionosphere a big kick and see what happens."
The military failed to tell the public that they do not know what exactly will happen, but a Penn State science article brags about that uncertainty. Macho science? The HAARP project uses the largest energy levels yet played with by what Begich and Manning call "the big boys with their new toys." HAARP is an experiment in the sky, and experiments are done to find out something not already known. Independent scientists told Begich and Manning that a HAARP-type "skybuster" with its unforeseen effects could be an act of global vandalism.

E-Systems is one of the biggest intelligence contractors in the world -- doing work for the CIA, defense intelligence organizations and others. $1.8 billion of their annual sales are to these organizations, with $800 million for black projects -- projects so secret that even the United States Congress isn't told how the money is being spent.
E-Systems was bought out by Raytheon, which is one of the largest defense contractors in the world. In 1994 Raytheon was listed as number forty-two on the Fortune 500 list of companies. Raytheon has thousands of patents, some of which will be valuable in the HAARP project. The twelve patents below are the backbone of the HAARP project, and are now buried among the thousands of others held in the name of Raytheon. Bernard J. Eastlund's U.S. Patent # 4,686,605, "Method and Apparatus for Altering a Region in the Earth's Atmosphere, Ionosphere; and/or Magnetosphere," was sealed for a year under a government Secrecy Order.

The Eastlund ionospheric heater was different; the radio frequency (RF) radiation was concentrated and focused to a point in the ionosphere. This difference throws an unprecedented amount of energy into the ionosphere. The Eastlund device would allow a concentration of one watt per cubic centimeter, compared to others only able to deliver about one millionth of one watt.

This huge difference could lift and change the ionosphere in the ways necessary to create futuristic effects described in the patent. According to the patent, the work of Nikola Tesla in the early 1900's formed the basis of the research.

What would this technology be worth to ARCO, the owner of the patents? They could make enormous profits by beaming electrical power from a powerhouse in the gas fields to the consumer without wires.

For a time, HAARP researchers could not prove that this was one of the intended uses for HAARP. In April, 1995, however, Begich found other patents, connected with a "key personnel" list for APTI. Some of these new APTI patents were indeed a wireless system for sending electrical power. Eastlund's patent said the technology can confuse or completely disrupt airplanes' and missiles' sophisticated guidance systems. Further, this ability to spray large areas of Earth with electromagnetic waves of varying frequencies, and to control changes in those waves, makes it possible to knock out communications on land or sea as well as in the air.

The patent said:

Begich found eleven other APTI Patents. They told how to make "Nuclear-sized Explosions without Radiation," Power-beaming systems, over-the-horizon radar, detection systems for missiles carrying nuclear warheads, electromagnetic pulses previously produced by thermonuclear weapons and other Star-Wars tricks. This cluster of patents underlay the HAARP weapon system.

Related research by Begich and Manning uncovered bizarre schemes. For example, Air Force documents revealed that a system had been developed for manipulating and disturbing human mental processes through pulsed radio-frequency radiation (the stuff of HAARP) over large geographical areas. The most telling material about this technology came from writings of Zbigniew Brzezinski (former National Security Advisory to U.S. President Carter) and J.F. MacDonald (science advisor to U.S. President Johnson and a professor of Geophysics at UCLA), as they wrote about use of power-beaming transmitters for geophysical and environmental warfare. The documents showed how these effects might be caused, and the negative effects on human heath and thinking.

The mental-disruption possibilities for HAARP are the most disturbing. More than 40 pages of the book, with dozens of footnotes, chronicle the work of Harvard professors, military planners and scientists as they plan and test this use of the electromagnetic technology. For example, one of the papers describing this use was from the International Red Cross in Geneva. It even gave the frequency ranges where these effects could occur -- the same ranges which HAARP is capable of broadcasting.

The following statement was made more than twenty-five years ago in a book by Brzezinski which he wrote while a professor at Columbia University:

In 1966, MacDonald was a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee and later a member of the President's Council on Environmental Quality. He published papers on the use of environmental control technologies for military purposes. The most profound comment he made as a geophysicist was, "the key to geophysical warfare is the identification of environmental instabilities to which the addition of a small amount of energy would release vastly greater amounts of energy." While yesterday's geophysicists predicted today's advances, are HAARP program managers delivering on the vision?

The geophysicists recognized that adding energy to the environmental soup could have large effects. However, humankind has already added substantial amounts of electromagnetic energy into our environment without understanding what might constitute critical mass. The book by Begich and Manning raises questions:

As early as 1970, Zbigniew Brzezinski predicted a "more controlled and directed society" would gradually appear, linked to technology. This society would be dominated by an elite group which impresses voters by allegedly superior scientific know-how. Angels Don't Play This HAARP further quotes Brzezinski:
"Unhindered by the restraints of traditional liberal values, this elite would not hesitate to achieve its political ends by using the latest modern techniques for influencing public behavior and keeping society under close surveillance and control. Technical and scientific momentum would then feed on the situation it exploits," Brzezinski predicted.

His forecasts proved accurate. Today, a number of new tools for the "elite" are emerging, and the temptation to use them increases steadily. The policies to permit the tools to be used are already in place. How could the United States be changed, bit by bit, into the predicted highly-controlled technosociety? Among the "steppingstones" Brzezinski expected were persisting social crises and use of the mass media to gain the public's confidence.

In another document prepared by the government, the U.S. Air Force claims: "The potential applications of artificial electromagnetic fields are wide-ranging and can be used in many military or quasi-military situations... Some of these potential uses include dealing with terrorist groups, crowd control, controlling breaches of security at military installations, and antipersonnel techniques in tactical warfare. In all of these cases the EM (electromagnetic) systems would be used to produce mild to severe physiological disruption or perceptual distortion or disorientation. In addition, the ability of individuals to function could be degraded to such a point that they would be combat ineffective. Another advantage of electromagnetic systems is that they can provide coverage over large areas with a single system. They are silent and countermeasures to them may be difficult to develop... One last area where electromagnetic radiation may prove of some value is in enhancing abilities of individuals for anomalous phenomena."

Do these comments point to uses already somewhat developed? The author of the government report refers to an earlier Air Force document about the uses of radio frequency radiation in combat situations. (Here Begich and Manning note that HAARP is the most versatile and the largest radio-frequency-radiation transmitter in the world.)
The United States Congressional record deals with the use of HAARP for penetrating the earth with signals bounced off of the ionosphere. These signals are used to look inside the planet to a depth of many kilometers in order to locate underground munitions, minerals and tunnels. The U.S. Senate set aside $15 million dollars in 1996 to develop this ability alone -- earth-penetrating-tomography. The problem is that the frequency needed for earth-penetrating radiation is within the frequency range most cited for disruption of human mental functions. It may also have profound effects on migration patterns of fish and wild animals which rely on an undisturbed energy field to find their routes.

As if electromagnetic pulses in the sky and mental disruption were not enough, T. Eastlund bragged that the super-powerful ionospheric heater could control weather.

Begich and Manning brought to light government documents indicating that the military has weather-control technology. When HAARP is eventually built to its full power level, it could create weather effects over entire hemispheres. If one government experiments with the world's weather patterns, what is done in one place will impact everyone else on the planet. Angels Don't Play This HAARP explains a principle behind some of Nikola Tesla's inventions -- resonance -- which affect planetary systems.

In describing the ionosphere as a delicately balanced system, Dr. Rauscher shared her mental picture of it -- a soap-bubble-like sphere surrounding Earth's atmosphere, with movements swirling over the surface of the bubble. If a big enough hole is punched through it, she predicts, it could pop.

Slicing the Ionosphere

David Yarrow of Albany, New York, is a researcher with a background in electronics. He described possible interactions of HAARP radiation with the ionosphere and Earth's magnetic grid:
"HAARP will not burn holes in the ionosphere. That is a dangerous understatement of what HAARP's giant gigawatt beam will do. Earth is spinning relative to thin electric shells of the multilayer membrane of ion-o-speres that absorb and shield Earth's surface from intense solar radiation, including charged particle storms in solar winds erupting from the sun. Earth's axial spin means that HAARP -- in a burst lasting more than a few minutes -- will slice through the ionosphere like a microwave knife. This produces not a hole but a long tear -- an incision."

"The image comes to mind of a spider on its web. An insect lands, and the web's vibrations alert the spider to possible prey. HAARP will be a man-made microwave finger poking at the web, sending out confusing signals, if not tearing holes in the threads. "
"Effects of this interference with symphonies of Gaia's geomagnetic harp are unknown, and I suspect barely thought of. Even if thought of, the intent (of HAARP) is to learn to exploit any effects, not to play in tune to global symphonies. "

Among other researchers quoted is Paul Schaefer of Kansas City. His degree is in electrical engineering and he spent four years building nuclear weapons. "But most of the theories that we have been taught by scientists to believe in seem to be falling apart," he says. He talks about imbalances already caused by the industrial and atomic age, especially by radiation of large numbers of tiny, high-velocity particles "like very small spinning tops" into our environment. The unnatural level of motion of highly-energetic particles in the atmosphere and in radiation belts surrounding Earth is the villain in the weather disruptions, according to this model, which describes an Earth discharging its buildup of heat, relieving stress and regaining a balanced condition through earthquakes and volcanic action.

In a second analogy, Schaefer says "Unless we desire the death of our planet, we must end the production of unstable particles which are generating the earth's fever. A first priority to prevent this disaster would be to shut down all nuclear power plants and end the testing of atomic weapons, electronic warfare and 'Star Wars'." Meanwhile, the military builds its biggest ionospheric heater yet, to deliberately create more instabilities in a huge plasma layer -- the ionosphere -- and to rev up the energy level of charged particles.

Two Stanford University radio scientists offer evidence of what technology can do to affect the sky by making waves on earth; they showed that very low frequency radio waves can vibrate the magnetosphere and cause high-energy particles to cascade into Earth's atmosphere. By turning the signal on or off, they could stop the flow of energetic particles.

The military has had about twenty years to work on weather warfare methods, which it euphemistically calls weather modification. For example, rainmaking technology was taken for a few test rides in Vietnam. The U.S. Department of Defense sampled lightning and hurricane manipulation studies in Project Skyfire and Project Stormfury. And they looked at some complicated technologies that would give big effects. Angels Don't Play This HAARP cites an expert who says the military studied both lasers and chemicals which they figured could damage the ozone layer over an enemy. Looking at ways to cause earthquakes, as well as to detect them, was part of the project named Prime Argus, decades ago. The money for that came from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA, now under the acronym ARPA.) In 1994 the Air Force revealed its Spacecast 2020 master plan which includes weather control. Scientists have experimented with weather control since the 1940's, but Spacecast 2020 noted that "using environmental modification techniques to destroy, damage or injure another state are prohibited." Having said that, the Air Force claimed that advances in technology "compels a reexamination of this sensitive and potentially risky topic."

As far back as 1958, the chief White House advisor on weather modification, Captain Howard T. Orville, said the U.S. defense department was studying "ways to manipulate the charges of the earth and sky and so affect the weather" by using an electronic beam to ionize or de-ionize the atmosphere over a given area.

In 1966, Professor Gordon J. F. MacDonald was associate director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at the University of California, Los Angeles, was a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee, and later a member of the President's Council on Environmental Quality.

He published papers on the use of environmental-control technologies for military purposes. MacDonald made a revealing comment: "The key to geophysical warfare is the identification of environmental instabilities to which the addition of a small amount of energy would release vastly greater amounts of energy. " World-recognized scientist MacDonald had a number of ideas for using the environment as a weapon system and he contributed to what was, at the time, the dream of a futurist. When he wrote his chapter, "How To Wreck The Environment," for the book Unless Peace Comes, he was not kidding around. In it he describes the use of weather manipulation, climate modification, polar ice cap melting or destabilization, ozone depletion techniques, earthquake engineering, ocean wave control and brain wave manipulation using the planet's energy fields.

He also said that these types of weapons would be developed and, when used, would be virtually undetectable by their victims. Is HAARP that weapon? The military's intention to do environmental engineering is well documented, U.S. Congress' subcommittee hearings on Oceans and International Environment looked into military weather and climate modification conducted in the early 1970's. "What emerged was an awesome picture of far-ranging research and experimentation by the Department of Defense into ways environmental tampering could be used as a weapon," said another author cited in Angles Don't Play This HAARP.

The revealed secrets surprised legislators. Would an inquiry into the state of the art of electromagnetic manipulation surprise lawmakers today? They may find out that technologies developed out of the HAARP experiments in Alaska could deliver on Gordon MacDonald's vision because leading-edge scientists are describing global weather as not only air pressure and thermal systems, but also as an electrical system.

Another scientist interviewed said there is a super-powerful electrical connection between the ionosphere and the part of the atmosphere where our weather comes onstage, the lower atmosphere.
One man-made electrical effect -- power line harmonic resonance -- causes fallout of charged particles from the Van Allen (radiation) belts, and the falling ions cause ice crystals (which precipitate rain clouds). What about HAARP? Energy blasted upward from an ionospheric heater is not much compared to the total in the ionosphere, but HAARP documents admit that thousandfold-greater amounts of energy can be released in the ionosphere than injected. As with MacDonald's "key to geophysical warfare," "nonlinear" effects (described in the literature about the ionospheric heater) mean small input and large output. Astrophysicist Adam Trombly told Manning that an acupuncture model is one way to look at the possible effect of multi-gigawatt pulsing of the ionosphere. If HAARP hits certain points, those parts of the ionosphere could react in surprising ways.

Smaller ionospheric heaters such as the one at Arecibo are underneath relatively placid regions of the ionosphere, compared to the dynamic movements nearer Earth's magnetic poles. That adds another uncertainty to HAARP -- the unpredictable and lively upper atmosphere near the North Pole.

HAARP experimenters do not impress commonsense Alaskans such as Barbara Zickuhr, who says "They're like boys playing with a sharp stick, finding a sleeping bear and poking it in the butt to see what's going to happen."

"For example, while changes in the earth's electric field resulting from a solar flare modulating conductivity may have only a barely detectable effect on meteorology, the situation may be different in regard to electric field changes caused by manmade ionization... " Meteorology, of course, is the study of the atmosphere and weather. ionization is what happens when a higher level of power is zapped into atoms and knocks electrons off the atoms. The resulting charged particles are the stuff of HAARP. "One look at the weather should tell us that we are on the wrong path," says Paul Schaefer, commenting on HAARP-type technologies.

Angels Don't Play This HAARP: Advances in Tesla Technology is about the military's plan to manipulate that which belongs to the world -- the ionosphere. The arrogance of the United States government in this is not without precedent.

Atmospheric nuclear tests had similar goals. More recently, China and France put their people's money to destructive use in underground nuclear tests. It was recently reported that the US government spent $3 trillion dollars on its nuclear program since its beginnings in the 1940's. What new breakthroughs in life science could have been made with all the money spent on death?

Begich, Manning, Roderick and others believe that democracies need to be founded on openness, rather than the secrecy which surrounds so much military science. Knowledge used in developing revolutionary weapons could be used for healing and helping mankind. Because they are used in new weapons, discoveries are classified and suppressed. When they do appear in the work of other independent scientists, the new ideas are often frustrated or ridiculed, while military research laboratories continue to build their new machines for the killing fields.

However, the book by Manning and Begich gives hope that the military industrial academic bureaucratic Goliath can be affected by the combined power of determined individuals and the alternative press. Becoming informed is the first step to empowerment.

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=%22al+qaeda%22+indonesia

I don't write the news.... 

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9802E3DA1F31F930A25751C1A9629C8B63

I just copy/paste it.........

http://www.hindustantimes.com/2004/Dec/31/181_1177084,001301540003.htm

This page mirrors:  http://www.cyberspaceorbit.com/seafire.html      Back to Bariumblues Main Page

Last week an OZ TV news item showed an Australian Geology Professor from PNG University interviewing survivors of the Tsunami. The survivor reported that as the sea wave swept in it was on fire--as was the air above it.

This ABC article suggests natural organism bio-luminescence was the cause of these flames. I can confirm that any sea voyage around PNG at night is spectacular due to the luminescence of the organisms in the prop wake - but I do have trouble buying that this gave the wave an "appearance" of being on fire. The PNG survivor shown on TV appeared very lucid and was puzzled by his genuine observation of flames in the sea as the tidal wave swept in.

Many bodies were apparently burnt. This is now explained as friction caused by rolling around with sand and debris-- maybe so.

Now local OZ scientists are suggesting natural gas was released from the PNG quake sub-sea fault line - sheets of flames and resultant fires have been reported at times from big seismic events on land around the world (eg late 1800's and early 1900's California) - these were once believed by scientists remote from the event locations to be caused by house gas pipeline ruptures however research proved the craziness of this idea as no such pipelines were in existence in most (99.9%) of such cases - the gas that ignited was possibly hydrogen and methane released along the fault from deep Mantle ultrabasic rocks undergoing phase changes or reaction with water, or release of natural gas from sedimentary sequence reservoirs located along the fault plane, or just possibly these fires involve massive piezo-electric (due to stress in breaking rock crystals) scalar EM energy release along and above the fault plane creating a Tesla style electric flame? A similar scalar EM energy release has been proposed by Bearden and others (see his book Excalibur) for the origin of fault plane quake related "Earth Stress Lights."

Any of the above might apply in the PNG Tsunami case. However as the eye-witness reports are rather anomalous in that flames are not normally associated with Tsunamis. Neither (as far as I am aware) are many burnt bodies normally found after such events. This entire PNG tsunami scenario requires further close detailed analysis. I have tried to get into e-mail comm with the geology professor from PNGU--so far with no success. 

Although we disagree on the role of the USGS drilling crew on site some 1000km SE of the tsunami quake site it is just possible they were sent there to gather field data on a quake-tsunami weapon deployment--without knowing what was about to unfold - rather than their drilling holes into a fault plane there leading to the quake initiation on the other side of PNG?

I noticed that the great highly devastating Kobe quake was initiated whilst a top USGS quake team were in Tokyo attending a big seismic symposium. They got into Kobe and carried out a very detailed study of that event which the USGS placed on their web site in prime position; very convenient if you want to see just how your weapon worked in a real deployment.

Having said the above the most likely scenario for this PNG Tsunami is still Natural Cause - but you do have to wonder what really went on that night?Harry Mason

.

Tsunamis typically get triggered by earthquakes. The massive underground movements create fast-moving waves that rise up when they reach shore. (ABCNEWS.com)

It rolled ashore thundering like a jet aircraft taking off, and people watched in horror as the wall of water erased their homes and swept thousands to their deaths.  Some thought they were being punished for their sins as the tsunami swept across Papua New Guinea on July 17, leaving only shattered boards where a village once flourished. Others thought a giant explosion caused the wave, which towered more than 40 feet.

Some survivors reported seeing sparks fly from the water and thought the ocean was on fire.

Costas Synolakis, professor of civil engineering at the University of Southern California, led a team of U.S. scientists to Papua New Guinea to see what they could learn from a tsunami that, according to the textbooks, never should have happened.

"It was an eye-opener," Synolakis says.

Synolakis had led other post-tsunami expeditions in the past, but this one was different because the villagers spoke English so the team didn't have to rely on the filtered testimony of government officials.

"Now we could understand the horror directly," he says. But when it was all over, Synolakis was left with questions of his own.

The earthquake that preceded the tsunami had a magnitude of 7, which scientists didn't think was powerful enough to trigger such a devastating wave. Underestimating the threat of tsunamis from even moderate earthquakes could mean much of the west coast of North America is more vulnerable than had been thought.

His team, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, went on a purely scientific expedition, but the mission soon included educating the locals. One top government official pleaded with the scientists to help his people understand they were not being punished "for the impiety of some people," as he put it. So they took time off from the difficult task of reconstructing the tsunami and tried to explain to the locals they weren't to blame. Particularly troubling was the question from a 15-year-old schoolgirl who asked about a "mountain of water with fire sparkles." Many of the victims had what appeared to be severe burns, suggesting that the water was on fire.

The tsunami hit about an hour after sundown, and the waters of the South Pacific are rich with dinoflagellates and other bioluminescent microorganisms that light up when disturbed.

"In the darkness, it may well have caused the water to sparkle like fire," he says. And the burn marks were caused by friction, not fire, as the victims were swept through the turbulent waters.

"I found that most people felt more reassured to hear that this is a natural event and it will happen again sometime in the future" rather than being fed an empty promise that it'll never happen again, Synolakis says.

In a report to the science foundation, team member Emile Okal, professor of geophysics at Northwestern University, notes that there are about 10 magnitude 7 earthquakes every year. Normally they don't produce tsunamis.

"Of the nine large tsunamis that have occurred in the past six years, only the New Guinea one resulted from an earthquake as small as magnitude seven," Okal says.

The wave hit five to 10 minutes after the quake. "It is possible the wave was breaking as it attacked" the narrow spit of land between the villages of Arop and Sisano, Okal says.

But the earthquake was on the beach, not offshore, so what could have caused such a large displacement of water that produced a tsunami?

Okal believes the quake triggered a huge landslide offshore.

"A tsunami is like kicking a bucket of water," he says. "You can make ripples at the surface by kicking or deforming the bottom of the bucket. This is what happens during an earthquake. The ocean floor is deformed and the water is kicked around."

An offshore landslide could do the same thing by "kicking the bucket" and changing the contour of the bottom, "which gives rise to extremely turbulent motions."

If that scenario is correct-"we cannot explain it otherwise," Okal says-then other areas of the world are more vulnerable than had been thought. He cites, for example, the west coast of Canada, and particularly the Fraser River basin. That large river has deposited a mountain of sediments along the coast.

"All that sediment just piles up in structures that are probably quite unstable," he says.

A moderate earthquake might be all it would take to cause the mountain to slump, generating a powerful tsunami.

The same scenario could also play out in Southern California, according to Synolakis, who lives in the coastal community of Venice. A moderate quake could cause an offshore landslide, which could send a wall of water crashing into the thousands of people who visit those beaches on summer days.

The death toll in Papua New Guinea may never be known precisely, but it is expected to approach 3,000, making the tsunami one of the most deadly of the century. The coastal land there is so flat that the victims "had no place to run," Okal says. Their best hope is to build their homes farther back from the beach, but that message never seems to catch on, even in sophisticated parts of the world like Southern California.

When the tsunami hits, the scientists advise, run as far from the beach as possible-if there's time. And if that won't do it, climb a tree, preferably one with deep roots. But if Papua New Guinea is like just about any place else, by the time it happens again, those warnings will have long been forgotten.

 Science writer Lee Dye's column appears Wednesdays on ABCNEWS.com.

QUESTIONS, RESPONSES, MORE QUESTIONS EDITOR'S NOTE: During the devastating PNP tsunami and ongoing a team from the National Science Foundation has been drilling test holes in the fault lines, 180: Woodlark Basin Project. Below we consider the implications. THE DIARY: A journalist arrives at the drilling site. Expressing questions and uncertainties about the ongoing project, the quake, the tidal wave, he discovers a strange play between the forces of technology and the forces of magic, the legend of a serpent, a mysterious eel that thrashes its tail in anger. NEWS BRIEF: The June 5, 1977, New York Times described the great earthquake which destroyed Tangshan, China on July 28, 1976, and killed over 650,000 people. "Just before the first tremor at 3:42 am, the sky lit up like daylight. The multi-hued lights, mainly white and red, were seen up to 200 miles away. Leaves on many trees were burned to a crisp and growing vegetables were scorched on one side, as if by a fireball."