Hark

Been withdrawn lately, not playing with the other bloggers. See that list over there –> that’s 22* kinds of cool there. All different, all great little blogs. And I haven’t even visited any of them in months. I bet they’re mad at me, or worse indifferent. But maybe not. Not Exxy anyway. If I lived in LA I’d have to take up drinking again just so I could hang with Exxy. Mr Wood lives there too and I believe Exile is driving distance. What I mean is the people listed there are not going to be ripped to shreds by baboons long since gone mad, for they are actual real proper people who make sense, not like the myriad of God’s little jokes that you see walking around everywhere. Often they are shirtless and almost always they can’t see outside the box. It’s a small box. They sort of have to scrunch down in there. Fish in a bowl, a water-box, constantly devouring each other and shitting each other back out. Then swimming around in it and never once considering, not even secretly by themselves in the little castle, calling the situation anything but normal.

Those people listed there are not like that, is what I’m saying.

Haven’t even been to my secret favourite blog where I selfishly lurk and rarely comment because the writer’s wit intimidates me with its brilliance. And because I rip him off a lot. But what can I do, now I’ve got the Baboon Compound up and running I just don’t have much time, or rather I have a greater choice of what to do in my spare time.

For example, out in the lab, I made a little gizmo from old VCR parts powered by the solar panel from a garden light. With the magic of gear reduction that little solar panel can run a little motor which will lift 15 pounds. Takes it about ten minutes, being gear reduced until the final shaft turns at about 2 RPM.

What does it do? Well sir it lifts a weight about 4 feet then drops it, then winds it up again. Over and over. Why? Attach it to a pump handle and every ten minutes it would lift 15 pounds of water four feet or a pound of water sixty feet. Over a sunny day that’s half a ton of water lifted (four feet). Not bad for a solar panel from a $5 garden light.

I used to put some of my writing on Helium, but they deleted most of it because, let’s see, it wasn’t ‘family content’. Funny all the ones that mentioned GWB, well made fun of him actually, were deleted. Oh and the poem, which I point out was rated #7 out of 738 by voters, because it said ‘fuck’. I assure you it was in context and relevant to the tone of the poem. Shakespeare said ‘fuck’ all the time, except in Elizabethan English it was pronounced ‘hark’, but nobody censors old Bill do they? Nah, he was a harking genius.


Maybe I should move to LA and take up an ether addiction.


* I haven’t actually counted

troubles

The man was hunting deer. He was not wandering the forest with a gun, as would appear in the absence of any deer or even tracks thereof, he was hunting deer. To admit otherwise would make him feel foolish and so he continued walking softly through the snow-lit night, searching for tracks and wondering if he would be able to shoot a deer should one appear. In a way that would make him feel more foolish. He hadn’t decided and it troubled him. Of course deer are good at sensing trouble. They know to walk on the Southern slopes where the snow is thin and on rocky ground where tracks can only be smelled and to avoid trouble. So the man walked alone with his rifle and his thoughts as the moon set behind the trees and the snow took on a bluish glow. The forest gave him a wide berth and watched him pass from the safety of painted shadows.

He didn’t feel cold, although he supposed he was, he wasn’t hungry although he carried food, and soon he found he had forgotten about tracks altogether until he came across his own, left there an hour and a half before. He realized then that he had let the terrain guide him, walking wherever was easiest with little thought to direction, and the crafty mountains had quietly turned him around and tried to expel him. This also troubled him. He had hoped this trip would clear him of troubles, a romantic notion he saw now. And he felt foolish and frustrated and did not at first see the deer, standing still as stone on the edge of a clearing across the valley, not one hundred yards away.

He unslung the rifle, still undecided and troubled over his own doubt. He unslung the rifle because all the reasons for and against balanced exactly and when that happens it is always better to do a thing and know for sure. He crouched behind a fallen tree and lay the rifle barrel across the trunk. The buck had not moved and for a moment he thought it was only a remarkable shadow until it gave a low snort and he saw the steam rise from its muzzle. He sighted the rifle and slowed his breath and though his troubles did not leave him, they stepped aside for a moment. His breathing stopped and his heart slowed and on the third interval he took his shot the way a man steps off a high ledge into black water.

The buck continued to stand perfectly still and the man’s troubles prepared to rage back in at him, twice as mean at having been deferred pointlessly. Then the buck dropped to one knee, turning its head in his direction, though it is doubtful he could be seen behind his log. It stayed that way a while longer then its remaining legs folded slowly under it and the short, sharp puffs of steam stopped coming from its muzzle. The rifle shot continued to echo through the night as the man tested his water and found there were no rocks waiting to crack him open, and the troubles were less sure of themselves and stayed away to discuss it. And still the rifle shot echoed.

The man became aware the sound was growing, reverberating from the mountainsides and coming, it seemed, from all directions. No longer a forlorn echo making futile copies of itself, but a growing roar, a deep shriek following close behind, and the man was confused. His troubles deserted him in cowardice and he looked about franticly for the source of the hellish noise and now there were other sounds, sharp cracks from his left and when he turned that way a glaring light bore down on him from above.

Japan Air 595, a charter flight full of corporate secretaries bound for Banff and a mountain holiday, came down on him dragging one wing, already on fire, through the tree tops as its pilots tried to regain control to the end. Its gleaming alloy belly passed over him in an instant which did not seem to pass, so that he could see the rivets in its panels. It disappeared from his sight in a roaring cloud of snow and smashed branches and sank into the valley, clearing a swath through the trees, and for a micron of time everything was as before, the buck lived and his troubles were close by and familiar. Finally the rumbling pressure wave of the plane’s final impact rose up and passed over him, chasing the forgotten rifle shot down the valley until all was quiet again. The man could see across the valley but not into it and when he looked across it was as though nothing had changed at all. Except the deer was gone, the snow there unmarred.

He made his way down into the valley, following the trail of smashed trees, climbing and clawing his way. The air was sick with the smell of kerosene and hydraulic fluid. Some of the trees still stood and were hung with debris and the odd secretary, one still strapped in her seat, another completely naked except for her shoes. And when he looked around he saw they were on the ground too, all around him, mixed in with the shattered timber and the brightly coloured contents of 319 suitcases so that he could only see them one at a time. A face, a hand, an arm pointing brokenly at him from under a pile of branches. The man sat down in the snow, the sun would come up soon.

They didn’t notice him at first as he didn’t move. He had left his rifle where he’d fired it and there was nothing else to indicate he wasn’t a passenger except that he was wearing boots and a heavy coat, but the searchers refused to notice this, as the thought of a single solitary survivor amidst the carnage appealed to them. They loaded him into a helicopter, obviously in shock as he would not speak, but otherwise remarkably unharmed. Surely a miracle. And the man was transported away from his troubles and he went on to another life and was not heard from again by anyone who had known him.

The searchers watched as the helicopter took him away and they thought to themselves surely this was proof of the unfathomableness of everything and possibly proof of God Himself. Perhaps it symbolized hope. But they weren’t sure and as the sun rose higher and the crows gathered they started to think it was a romantic notion and began to feel foolish and apprehensive. They took these troubles away with them like stones in their shoes.

wtf?

Why didn’t you just say that? Why did you hint and imply and confuse me with subtleties when you know my head is thick? The information inlet is covered in a fine screen to keep out insects and salesmen, only direct thoughts can get through. Tone of voice is repelled likewise subtle body language. I’m not looking, I’m not listening, I’m just absorbing information. And with you it’s like trying to catch bits of confetti dropped in a river. What the hell does that have to do with it, I’m thinking, and damn there goes some more confetti way over the other side. Couldn’t you just put it in a box or plastic bag and hand it to me? Why need it be so thoroughly dispersed?

And why, when it’s my turn and I hand you my confetti neatly wrapped and sorted by colour with an EZ-Open™ flap, do you fling it all up in the air and go chasing after it? Why do you make everything harder than it needs to be?

a² + b² = c²

is Pythagoras’ famous theorem. It describes the relationship between the hypotenuse of a right triangle and its remaining 2 sides. It does not mean Pythagoras favored triangles over the humble square or the noble circle. He was not mandating a triangular world (how would the tides work?), he was not on the payroll of any large triangle manufacturing conglomerate. There was no ulterior motive.

None. It’s just a fact. Go figure.

Do not try to read my body language, tone of voice, facial expression nor should you seek any sub-text. There is none. There are no lines to read between, tone means nothing (however volume has significance) and this is just what gravity does to my face when I’m not using it.

SO (f) HAVE (u) A (c) NICE (k) DAY (o) YOU (f) HEAR? (f)

I mean that.