Learn

Break the cycle
Be the one to change
Fall, get up and try again.

     NB: Not so much a poem as a teenage mantra still going.

This just made me laugh!

...I get that the world right now is in something of a state of uproar (as though it's ever not) and I can totally see how frustrating that is when a lot of the time it's just waiting, convincing and hoping for people to wake up .. .. .. but the options are limited and when you take the biggest picture view (excepting situations that have/do spin into violence) antagonism only gets you so far with anyone, you know? Patience. Wait out the rage and do something more useful.

[Add: hey Daily Show don't flog a dead horse...  :) "can't stay mad.." ...

Expanse (below) it's a shoddy gif but it only took a min to throw together... great show].

New rats are settling in well, they're very bold and exceptionally friendly - though Curio has a fondness for nibbling and, like a kitten's claws, his teeth are pretty sharp so they have a collection of sticks and blocks to chew on now ;)

Shorty's dad is outside right now clucking at the ladies, his flock's been keeping an eye on me all afternoon lol

Here's a couple of interesting things in the world lately: a guy built a car out of scrap and waste, this video is worth watching again even if you've seen it, and lastly during a drought a snake walks into town for a pint.

Have a great day guys, even when it's trying to rain on you!

This evening there's three new rats in the house [pics to follow!] two boys and a girl - who we believe is soon-ish to have babies herself. I'd guestimate she's two week along, so expect either good news [and lots more pictures] or awol.

Okay, two things:

1: This page has seen a huge uptick in hits since that guy drove his car into a bunch of people then stabbed someone and got shot for his pains. You may have noticed that I haven't said anything about it. That's because in my estimation of the world this is not a significant outlier or a red flag for anything that I'm involved in except by its proximity. These are things that I talk about here anyway and therefore I haven't felt a need to discuss it directly.

With that in mind, I've just seen a statement which lets me know that something I've been talking about for fucking ages [with people in my life] is coming to the fore in society. "There will be lessons to learn including whether [...] the perpetrator was directed or groomed to commit such an appalling crime." Once or twice I've mentioned a [third wheel] piece that I'm slowly churning through in the background, Manipulation... we haven't defined the words yet, that's why the author of the above [at a guess] was fumbling for the word and put down two to give you a contrast bc the doesn't currently occur in conversation or text on a regular enough basis that it came to mind. Language changes fastest by use so I'm working on this Coercion/Manipulation piece... eta-post month or so. [re-learning a little deutsche to get another perspective on it too... eep..].

2: Also while writing ^^ the pigeons prompted me to put food down outside.... hehe I've seen the pregnant lady! She's not pregnant anymore, disappeared out the gate when I got close! There must be someone at home presently caring for the babies :D She's got plenty of weight on her still and looked tired but healthy.

[New Day is harder to hear than some of the others so lyrics sheet].
Working on the means piece again today, I hope it's gonna be worth the effort to read when it's done.. lol.. Learning loads in the process though so ;) that ^^ is my soundtrack, enjoy!
[Add: Aaaarrrruuughhhhhh - brain melting! Must stop! If I do say so myself, I'ma little proud of some shit I just wrote: ~4 days to post.]

Being a giant hippy today ;)



Protests yesterday seemed to be more effective than I'd expected, pleasantly surprising.

Push it:

P.s. Thanks Daily Show Noah lol .. now I can just get a fedora!!
Then everyone will understand that I'm celibate and I could go out for a drink with mates without getting hit on by random people. Not that there's anything wrong with being-or-hitting on people but it's a pain in the ass to try explain non-religious celibacy over the music and without becoming centre of attention for something that's honestly just uncomfortable to talk about in a large group (sometimes I say I'm taking vows... it's easier). And the moment you say 'No sorry, that's not, I don't..' they ask.. oh boy do they ask: I once sat grumpily beside an actual friend while being asked (by a 'friend') my full story (we're talking at least an hour) right back to the paedophilia and networks of rapists and through to why I'm now celibate - then he spent the taxi ride home hitting on my friend by text... *sigh* I could've maybe should've told him to shut up but he shouldn't fucking ask...
        If only it were as easy as an item of clothing. Just for an illusory moment there it was lol
Oh and for the record.. may have been oooohs in the studio, I laughed aloud.

I am such an ass, nearly choked to death on coffee a moment ago...

It looks like people have been using the sounds so here's another couple that I like:

Studying/Focus:
1. This one I write to 432hz
2. For editing 'alpha wave'
3. Very similar to the 'love frequency' been using it primarily for thinking and meditation (below)


Conversation Makers:
[1.] [Alpha wave placeholder bc I can't find it yet but it was great... trawling through history now...]
2. This is something I feel that everyone should know ;) even if it's not in the same vein.
3. You might not even know this is playing if you have it low on volume, but it'll have the impact anyway... A little while ago in our mad house we had a bunch of people together (half stoned, half drunk) on very different wavelengths, this sound-thing really seemed to help conversation. I've also used this frequency for meditation.

Just come across this while looking up the others, quite enjoying it so far... oh, nope, giving me a headache.

Lastly, on the means piece.. been avoiding but I'm actually working in it again today, eta-post give me a week or two to get it back in order and re-write-up.

My garden had a visitor this morning... She's heavily pregnant, waddle-hopping her belly off the floor and she has this most adorable brown furred chubby teddy face with (narrowed in the light) big black eyes. She stopped by yesterday and ran when I interrupted her; this morning I scared [might be a strong word, she wasn't exactly running and stopped at the gate to watch me] her away during the last of pre-dawn as I went out to feed the birds.. she's so confidant she came back with a friend right after I left, they stopped at the Jez Diner for about 5 minutes :) unfortunately the video crapped out (I'm having a run of bad luck with tech lol) so I can't show you her chubby tail and happy ratty fingers. At one point my stomach rumbled and she surprised me by breaking the 4th (window) wall - looked up at me like, 'don't let me keep you from breakfast, go on, shoo human'.



Oh and do you remember that pigeon from before (I knew his dad from way back, last winter)? They were both down this morning, Droopy and the adults left pretty quickly but [oh com'on give me an idea guys, I suck at names.. he'll be called shorty for his beak if no one else names him] Shorty and the younglings stuck around. Many fights, much teens.

The squirrels have been around again with the better weather too. A very strong male (probably father of the not-so-babies-anymore) dropped in for a snack before dashing off to the end of the row (as the squirrels do every morning).

Good luck with the day people, hope it's a productive one ;)

On the understanding that aesthetics mean very little when it comes to audio, please don't judge these sounds based on the ... seriously, 'love frequency'?! ... ..*sigh*.. ... they have seemingly been helping meditation/thinking lately though:

Rant:
Attract love? Bah! I've heard more of this lately (some tv bullshit, but some actual cult-y nonsense too).. this sort of thing: 'Seek love and love will find you'. Sure if you're open to the possibility sometimes people will give you what you expect (if they're willing to give) partly because people often try to live up to others' expectations and partly because if you want to hold love for someone and they're okay with that then it's instinctively easier. I have a problem with the illusion, though I guess sometimes people just want to love blindly. Can't fault that.

Something we, humans, seem to forget in the hustle and bustle of daily life.. these psychological processes are ongoing. A little while ago I was talking about being a teen and wanting to make it all stop, it doesn't work like that. The one thing we can guarantee is that time passes, so if we're alive we keep ticking and these things in our minds go on.

I watch a lot of tv and read a lot of fiction, I love ideas and the windows that you get into people's minds with their fictional interpretations. I try to understand people through these obscured flashes. In a manner it's not much unlike talking to people in person, we give you cues and thoughts or ideas and if you take (the moments it takes) you can see more of who we are by how we say the things and spend our time.

A lot of the time, I have migraines or things that masquerade as migraines. I wonder sometimes if that's not more the ongoing process of learning not to hate everything. Other times it appears to be an entirely medical condition (e.g. strobing* lights will trigger a migraine regardless of how I feel). Medical science has always been something interesting to me.. (wait that's a lie, in school I wanted to be a physicist and ignored my biology teacher when he said I had a talent). Maybe, it seems natural to me, is more accurate. And again I think that's the more anti-social aspects of me, the bits that watch autopsies and say 'wow, bloody humans work' instead of 'eewwwww livers are gross..' (for the record, imo a liver's one of the least aesthetically pleasing organs, lower intestines' are weird looking too).
*Google can spell but owns Blogger whose spellchecker has some strange issues with words... Strobing.

Anyway, humans are weird things and we forget that.. we don't instinctively give ourselves enough space to happen - on the right wavelengths at the right moments.

Rally in the rain! So much is happening today I've already missed two of the things I wanted to see.. got there for the end of the pro-choice rally which had loads'a people despite the wet! (Heard there was an anti-choice person present saying horrible things, though I didn't meet him).

Random but last week's SNL Weekend Update was fucking epic... Hopefully this week's [no SNL this week? :( aww] and Last Week will tide me over until TDS is back...

I understand some people tried to create a Nightly Show in the UK... I haven't actually seen it (nothing you don't have to sign up for seems to be online yet..) but I heard it was saved by the same person who saved Big Brother many years ago so.. on that account I haven't looked too hard, [hmm, judge-y of me] but I can't imagine that it'll be the same as the Nightly Show:

Little update on the laptop and Means piece, it's gone. There seems to be no way presently to access the file, which means I'm starting from scratch and memory as of today (with roughly half the research saved to another pc). Hopefully the final piece will be more refined from this re-start, though presently I'm cursing the gods of dodgy laptop hinges.

Bird Tails: There's a russet brown and speckled white dove that's been hanging around mine at lunch and supper on&off for a year or so now, I believe he's male from the amazing green and purple chest feathers. A month or so ago a saw him with a youngling, very similar features (down to the abnormally short beak) speckling and chest pattern, though grey and white instead of brown; I figure this is offspring. A couple of days ago the new male came for lunch alone* he was making abortive but kind gestures that were being (very reasonably) taken for aggression by the other birds, I watched this three or four times... You know sometimes when you look an animal in they eye and you just get what they're thinking.. so I made a couple of opening hand-motions and made slowing sounds to imply calm down.. the bird cocked his head at me and did a head tilt that I'm beginning to recognise as a whatever/eye-roll/nonchalance and tried to approach the same dark grey bird, this time more slowly and without the peck-like gesture, the bird allowed him closer. He cooed and I left because it was bloody cold (England in March...). Half hour later I see him and the four other birds clustered together-ish (you know how they like a little personal space) and muttering between one another. Today he's back with a few other birds and Droopy, they seem to have become friends.

* The father was absent but completely fine, cooing at the girls when I next saw him lol he knows how handsome he is!

Hope you're having a great day people!

My laptop (which the Means of Preotest piece is saved on) broke yesterday afternoon. There's a guy I know that might be able to fix it and I may be able to get the file off it today anyway... it's just going to be a little harder to finish for now.

So meanwhile, I finally got around to starting Empire (102 playing while I type here)....
[Below - that is an angry pause-face, damn she's beautiful].

 "...accept the reality that these things happened but do not let them cloud [you]. If you are to be a positive influence on the world, you need to forgive yourself."
Guru Pathik

Daww, no Daily Show today. I understand that was also for snow, though the frozen water kind rather than the adorable rat man.

Over there ---->
is the Cat's Eye nebula as seen by Hubble:

"The full beauty of the Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is revealed in this new, detailed view from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The image from Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) shows a bull's eye pattern of eleven or even more concentric rings, or shells, around the Cat's Eye. Each 'ring' is actually the edge of a spherical bubble seen projected onto the sky - that's why it appears bright along its outer edge.

Observations suggest the star ejected its mass in a series of pulses at 1,500-year intervals. These convulsions created dust shells, each of which contain as much mass as all of the planets in our solar system combined (still only one percent of the Sun's mass). These concentric shells make a layered, onion-skin structure around the dying star. The view from Hubble is like seeing an onion cut in half, where each skin layer is discernible.

The bull's-eye patterns seen around planetary nebulae come as a surprise to astronomers because they had no expectation that episodes of mass loss at the end of stellar lives would repeat every 1,500 years. Several explanations have been proposed, including cycles of magnetic activity somewhat similar to our own Sun's sunspot cycle, the action of companion stars orbiting around the dying star, and stellar pulsations. Another school of thought is that the material is ejected smoothly from the star, and the rings are created later on due to formation of waves in the outflowing material.

Credit: NASA, ESA, HEIC, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)"

 March 8th

It has been possible in nearly every situation (that I can think of that applies here) to get through to people who are holding convictions of rage. That said, it takes skill, time, patience and [here's the typical kicker for people] actually a bit of love and respect.

                      They will not hear you if they don't feel you're listening to them.

Of course often they're not listening to you, but that's the first trick. Both sides must be engaged to play the game and aware of what the game entails: in this scenario a debate in which you are each trying to sway the other's opinions.
           I'm going to use as an example a stalemate-debate that I had recently with an anti-choice extremist (a lot of them there were hardcore, this guy is taking it to the extreme). Using a simple good-cop bad-cop routine he was encouraged to step aside and talk to me reasonably calmly.

His first remark; "They're going to tell you I hate women, it's not true.... [etc] .." at this point he was talking, game mode not engaged. My reply ("I don't care for rumour, I'd like to know why you're here?") started the game.

[Add: there would have been a couple of examples here of how someone can get something past you openly, make you in conversation agree to something in principle by a round-about route and then start pushing you on it... It's [antisocial] manipulation style 001. A prime example is What'sHisName, ThatCockWhoFuckedOverTheUK and the breastfeeding thing "I don't think it's hard to.." no it's not hard but that doesn't make it right to literally force people into a corner either, what an asshole. Anyway so this a placeholder that's uh I guess sorta filled now.. Haha! Thanks asshole, you're such a smooth operator it was so fucking easy to find this link].

[...transition/cut...]

Good morning folks. It's 8am and I'm hard at work on the Protest piece. That said, I'm currently wanting to include just fuck-tons of stuff and data, and I think it might take another couple of days yet to complete.

Random note 1: it's Tuesday which means I can get monday night's comedy.... And that little TDS scroll has come in really handy - thank you Daily Show! 2: Finding it consistently amusing that I keep expecting friends to get tired of TDS snippets or whole episodes.. they always seem to love it :) We had some uproarious laughter yesterday! (Lopez, Mar.6)

[Add: interviews ;) ftw]

Monkey teaches human how to crack the nut with a stone from iaf









for Snow :D

Ruminations on 15 years of ptsd below:

Good morning :) I'm still working on that piece (sorry it'll be an essay before it's done, I'm sure..). And in order to write the Means of Protest, I went to a peaceful protest... Turns out here where I live there's a couple of people who are.. I'm not gonna call them extremists, but they're pretty fucking hardcore on the judgement side of things.. who are hanging around outside the hospital where people go for abortions, cervical screenings, general check-ups and other female-body-part things with anti-choice signs around their necks.

I think the majority of the pro-choice (my side, ovs) were truly fairly peaceful (conversations around Women's Rights and Transgender issues seemed to resolve in the face of the anti-choice crowd)... On the anti-choice side there was some chanting, some shouting (incoherent gibberish about blaming us for something that I didn't hear, if it ever did make sense).

And afterwards I went to see a film that I would highly recommend:



*grins* Hey! It's Tuesday! You know what that means? New Daily Show! *even bigger grin as it loads up on my screen*
Fucking epic Last Week last night too :) life is good for me today.

Hello, I try to post most days, sorry it's been a couple this time.. been busy getting involved in things... and writing things.. there'll be a long ramble soon (been working on it for days....)

Completely unrelated but kind of awesome, have a look at this short video.. it's living art (think they must be being lured with food or something..?) Interesting as Fuck always has some good things.
[Add: okay this is fucking cool too; the camera shutter speed almost perfectly matches the speed of the helicopter's rotors, strangely hypnotising effect... or maybe that's the tiredness kicking in lol
2nd add: Oh fuck, this is really cool too... the images sent with Voyager (not the tv show).]

Beautiful Baby Rats: Terry's staring up at the camera, D. at the bottom grinning, Kin's keeping watch out of the window. These guys get up to so much shit and we love them for it... especially when Terry's winding up his brothers and jumping onto my face at (silly)am, then he gets kissed on the head until he squirms... ;)