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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Mar 19, 2014 - 11:05pm PT
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Literature as graphic art.
A special hello to Illolo, our feralfae as the fairy tale is mentioned. It's been a while.
How the heck are you, gal?
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zBrown
Ice climber
Brujo de la Playa
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Mar 19, 2014 - 11:14pm PT
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Any bones to pick with me? Send 'em to the Homeland Security Complaint desk.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Mar 19, 2014 - 11:48pm PT
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Cavities
http://oregoncaves4u.com/skeleton%20cave.html
can be holey places.
Speaking of holy, St. Joseph, MO, is a western icon.
(The feast day of ST. Joe is today...I had coffee on the patio at the 510 Bistro to celebrate.)
Louis Rubidoux (Robidoux), the adventurous one, eventually settled near Riverside where the town named for him is sited. He set out from ST. Joe and was one of the first settlers from the East in that area.
In Merced, today.Leaving.
Really. [Click to View YouTube Video]
Seriously.
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zBrown
Ice climber
Brujo de la Playa
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Mar 20, 2014 - 12:03am PT
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Way back when, a lot of loads came across between Chula Vista and Campo in the backpacks of local turkeys, though there was significant traffic in the ocean on the backs of swimmers (until it dawned on somebody that you could haul a lot more in a boat --> they eventually upgraded to a freighter, would have been cool if they'd bought the Hotel Del, which is where most of the small boats unloaded). WTF, Coronado is pretty much a shitty surfing beach, what else is a poor boy to do?
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zBrown
Ice climber
Brujo de la Playa
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Mar 20, 2014 - 12:20am PT
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THE HARVARD REVIEW: “DRUGS AND THE MIND” (SUMMER 1963)
This issue of the journal, which lists Henry Kissinger as a faculty board member, features the early research on psychedelics that was coming out of Cambridge, Massachussetts, right before all hell broke loose. With essays by Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), naturopath Andrew Weil, and ethnobiologists Richard Schultes and R. Gordon Wasson, plus a thoughtful review of the then-banned Naked Lunch (1959), and “before-and-after” artwork by Arthur Hoener, it was one of the first publications to map the emerging frontier of chemical propulsion through inner space.
I've actually read (portions of) this.
THE ACT OF KILLING (2012)Joshua Oppenheimer’s harrowing documentary follows a group of aging murderers as they reenact their participation in the killing and torture spree that ravaged Indonesia in the mid-1960s. These remorseless thugs model themselves after characters from American gangster movies while attempting to make their own film about their real-life pageant of cruelty. Following decades of suppressed trauma, the catharsis that unfolds is devastating
Doncha tell Licky
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Mar 20, 2014 - 09:42am PT
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The Yawp of Reason THE RAINBOW STORIES by William T. Vollmann (Atheneum: $22.95; 543 pp.)
RICHARD EDER
July 16, 1989|RICHARD EDER
The rainbow in the title of this collection of pieces by William T. Vollmann refers to the author's use of different colors as codes for different chunks of human life and human spirit.
[We seem to have dropped the color system last year on The Flames. It was not effectual anyway. Proceed at your own risk, therefore.]
It is a private and hermetic conceit, one of a good many in Vollmann's writing. More immediately, though, the "Rainbow" suggests the extraordinary range and fire of the author's style.
The pieces in "Rainbow" extend from fiction to spooked poetic narratives to intoxicated reportage to reportage so meticulously uninflected as to suggest Dada. Vollmann manages a whole wardrobe of voices: ornate, inconsolably bare, romantic, and something resembling messages on computers. A single author's voice would imply synthesis and connection; Vollmann's pieces are rafts foundering in the divided waters of a world blown apart. [I am minding visions of Bimbo and bales of marijuana in an icy lake at the moment.]
He writes with a fierce and bright-hued sensibility, perpetually inflamed. The disconnection and threat of modern, or if you like [I don't like--sorry, just old-school 'me.'] postmodern life--Vollmann stands in our avant-garde--goads him to the farthest possible remove from the minimalism that reigned in our fiction a decade ago, and still has important voices. He is the most maximalist of writers. "Ladies and Red Nights" is a series of notes on Vollmann's nights spent touring San Francisco's Tenderloin, inventorying the different kinds of sex offered, talking to prostitutes and strippers. He is punctiliously detailed; writing down what each experience or encounter costs him. (A peep-show slot machine, 25 cents; an hour or two with a call girl, $150.)
{Avant-garde, apres-ski, tout de suite, all best avoided in English. Gide has a translation fetish, too.]
From the blur, one or two women emerge. There is Brandi, the exuberant extrovert [who writes this alliterative way besides porn mag editors?] who has pricing down to such a fine art that she is able to cost out each conversation with Vollmann. Having told him she loves to eat, she charges an additional 50 cents to disclose her favorite dish: spaghetti.
There is Christina, bolstered by eight or nine steady customers but diligently patrolling her three Tenderloin blocks each night. "The Tenderloin does not seem to be so much good or bad as constricted," Vollmann writes.
It is an odd phrase, that. Equally odd is a sudden burst of pathos amid his note taking: "The sorriness of what she had to do for 10 years was almost enough to make one believe in the Divine--there must be something else." We realize that Vollmann is up to something other than realism, with its hunger to know what is.
[Modern parlance has it, "'sup, dude?"]
Vollmann's is a deflected hunger. His focus is not his subjects but his own act of looking at them. He tries out different voices--objective, sentimental, dislocated--as if one of them just might help him break through. I am cut off but I am trying, he seems to say.
There is an equivalent dandy-in-spite-of-himself quality to "White Knights," another bit of urban reportage. Here, though, there is the ghost of a connection, and it is an unlikely one. His subject is the San Francisco Nazi Skinz, a gang of skinheads.
They are rough, all right. Anthony, for example, polishes his boots obsessively. "People are gonna see their reflection right before I kick them in the face," he explains. Curiously, though, the tone is elegiac, almost tender. The Skinz are washed up; most have left town. Vollmann uses a past tense. "They used to go into bars and find fighting, punch people in the face when they didn't like the way they looked (being Nazis, they were conscious that appearance is everything)."
Nazism is simply the nearest rebellion at hand. He has a devastating thought, watching the Skinz in their hangout. They remind him of pictures from Buchenwald. "Stubble-crowned, tattooed, naked, and angular."
In "Blue Yonder," Vollmann mixes reportage on the city's street people with a vein of Expressionist nightmare. It is a semi-fiction; his portrait of drifters and bums is counterpointed by his account of a schizoid madman, Zombie, who moves among them stunning them with his cane, pouring Drano into their mouths and decapitating them. It is a horrifying piece, claustrophobic in its intensity and detail. [Not so good or bad, but simply constricted?]
In "The Indigo Engineers," again a mix of fiction and reporting, Vollmann writes of the Survival Research Laboratory. It consists of three engineers who design and build terrifying machines with scythe blades, flame-throwers and sensors. They star in theater-of-cruelty spectacles. Rabbit-like and human-like robots are released; the killing machines go after them and tear them bloodily to pieces.
The piece takes the form of interviews with the engineers, who are passionately matter-of-fact about their job. Intercut with these is the story of Pawel, whose family was taken to Gestapo headquarters in Poland when he was a child. An officer gave him an apple; the family was suddenly and arbitrarily released. And Vollmann weaves the two stories together.
And as I stood talking at the register to Alyssa at the bookstore, in walks John the Bartender from the pub. He is looking for a copy of The Rainbow Stories, and there is one, after some looking around, and this is how it came to be mentioned here.
I finished Lafcadio's Adwentures, aka the Vatican Swindle, aka Caves du Vatican. It was good. I plan on another bottle of Gide someday.
Maybe one will wash up on Coronado Beach.
Doncha tell zBrown or Licky--one is on the wagon, the other is off his rocker.
The Vole is the 'most maximalist' and the 'ex post fatualist' in one small corpus literatus.--MFM, gone to sunrise
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zBrown
Ice climber
Brujo de la Playa
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Mar 20, 2014 - 11:18am PT
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Just spotted now at Coronado North Beach, site of the infamous 1964 arrest of zBrown for trepassing on a Federal Reservation. "Ya got any ID in them baggies, son?"
Not one of these kids ever backpacked weed across the border, though Jackie Coogan was in a car crash near Pine Valley in May 4, 1935 which killed his father and three others. Apparently, he therefore did not attend "cinco" at Hussongs.
The first known ad for the infamous "Songs without a Name"
If you find yourself in the position of looking for stuff, it can be found, but there will be travel involved (to Stateline Road).
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throwpie
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Mar 20, 2014 - 06:45pm PT
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DYSLEXICS UNTIE!
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Mar 20, 2014 - 08:38pm PT
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A dyslexic walks out of a Denny's feeling like a god.
He shoulda eat at home.
I'm off to the Mission to see what they got cookin'.
I haven't seen hide nor hair of Gandalf, and I'm worried.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Mar 20, 2014 - 11:36pm PT
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Elevator Shaft, II/5.8, Jim Bridwell and Phil Bircheff, 1965."deep""nasty-looking""One very long pitch up this chimney..." "...leads to a grassy terrace."
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zBrown
Ice climber
Brujo de la Playa
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Mar 20, 2014 - 11:38pm PT
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Dyslexic dude show up a toga party dressed as a goat?
Anhywaty, there is good news, Licky has commenced work on a book about the Mayonaise missing airplane.
I don't know much about talking with celebrities, but Michele was once told by Nancy Reagans' secret service agent that "Mrs. Reagan does not speak to servants". WWTTFF?
Lord it's raining here and it's storming on the deep blue sea
Lord it's raining here and it's storming on the deep blue sea
Can't no blonde headed woman make a monkey out for me
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Mar 21, 2014 - 12:01am PT
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The Process is ongoing.
Scientific methodology is the new religion.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
LIKE IT OR NOT!
But, "Why; Why; Why?"
Stay tuned in, suckers, I mean seekers.
The truth is WAY out there,
yet closer than we can know.
"The wide way you seek is higher than you can possibly imagine, sister.
I say go this way: take a left at the second star,
then follow the bull straight through to morning.
You'll get to the base of Peter Pan a lot faster than walking.
And, no, I don't know about any plane crash. Sorry."
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Mar 21, 2014 - 07:24am PT
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Dear Readers,
We have settled on the Working Title of of zBrown's memoirs, now nearing the conclusion of its third draft:
Noontime on the Beaches of North and South Bay.
Bolt, Mineheart, Point Richmond Publishing Co.
I predict a bit more than 20 weeks on the Times Bestseller List, topping out at #9 or #10.
No literary prizes will be collected, though it's likely to be on several long lists for literary rewards--the Ban Looker, the Quicky Licky, Braun Brown, and the No Bull prizes, I'm thinking.
Pre-order your copy today. Subscriptions are available thru my email, so PM me and send cash, check, money order, or wait till my Pay-Pal account is set up. Ten dollars and fifty cents per order.
Hey, it's already on the bargain cart, manner of speaking.
Who sez surfers can't write as well as climbers?
Tami, we understand your unwillingness to be the illustrator, and Throwpie, we know you have serious other commitments.
Lollie was too busy, as well.
When the tough get going, we rule. We have done it ourselves and are rather proud of the results.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/mar/12/booker-prize-literary-awards
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/19/hilary-mantel-duchess-cambridge-scandal?guni=Article:in%20body%20link
We are still interested in a bomber cover photo, however.
And Tom Wolfe's still negotiating for the introduction, but I am not sanguine about this.
Chouinard, well, he's just not a South Bay guy, though he thought he was qualified. Besides, he wouldn't pony up for any pre-orders himself, so...
"Gnarly. Let's hit the Aero Club."[Click to View YouTube Video]Sean and the Band have agreed to do the Launch Party!!!
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Mar 21, 2014 - 08:10am PT
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Seaweed is not the best material for a longboard, as they found. Local legend Spice McDougal on a test run. RIP.
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zBrown
Ice climber
Brujo de la Playa
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Mar 21, 2014 - 06:13pm PT
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^^It does make good gunpowder though.
Where are you from?
Locker* could touch this up to make a cover foto that would be da bomb!
You know, put zBrown's head on Slim and switch Slim to goofy foot with an insert of Richie Valens right below "Hi There". Gotta cater to the entire audience if you know what I mean. La Bamba, SA.
Did he die in a plane crash of a plane full of dope? Doncha tell Waylon.
*No need for Lollygagging around with Tami and the Bachelor with Locker onboard. Notice who just moved back to Southern California. Baby you can shine my shoes, yes I'm gonna sing the bluz.
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=539369&tn=15860#msg2369644
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Mar 22, 2014 - 12:15pm PT
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"And REILLY ! My favorite bird of them ALL!!!!!!!!"--Bird thread commentary.
For shame, buddy!
Ron, you did NOT mean that...
Right, azzhat?!
Quail? I call party fowl!
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zBrown
Ice climber
Brujo de la Playa
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Mar 22, 2014 - 11:28pm PT
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