hogblog

I don’t remember this because I was too young at the time but I was told this story by my dad who witnessed it. Once a long time ago in a galaxy far far away I lived in Bezerkeley California were my dad ran the Pacific Film Archive at U.C Berkeley. Because of his role at the archives he was down with all bay area film makers of the era. Once in the early 70s he was having a party and among others, George Lucas was there. Lucas at the time was in very early planning for Star Wars and decided to bounce his idea off me, a very grumpy and tired child. Maybe he thought I would share his vision because I am a boy and my name is George as well. He sat me down on his lap and asked, ” George, what do you think about a movie with space ships and lasers and robots?!” I, with all the wisdom of a grumpy and tired child replied, “I think thats a stupid idea!”

Well, my dad could clearly see it was way past my bed time and put me to bed. I could only imagine what the world would be like if Lucas had listened to me and shelved his stupid idea for a movie about dumb things like robots and lasers and space ships.

When I was a little kid my dad used to bring me to this Japanese restaurant in north beach San Francisco called Cho Cho’s. Whenever I went there the owner Jimmy Sakata (Jimmy Cho Cho to me) would make me fancy kids drinks and show me what he had in the paper bags behind his bar. Guns! Big guns, which was way cool to me. He would let me hold them although I bet they were always loaded. Back then Cho Cho’s was a hang out for writers and different heads of the time. Everyone from Nobel prize winning author Yasunari Kawabata to Clint Eastwood. One of the regulars was Richard Brautigan, also a gun aficionato.

One day in 1984 Brautigan was hanging out and asked Jimmy if he could borrow a gun for the night. Jimmy said sure and lent him a Smith & Wesson 44. The next day Brautigan returned without the gun and said he needed it for one more night, but in lieu of the gun he would lend Jimmy a brick. This was not that strange considering the eccentric nature of his clientele so Jimmy took the brick and put it on the bookshelf behind the bar.

That night Richard Brautigan killed himself with Jimmy’s gun. The gun, not being registered, never made its way back to Jimmy. The brick, on the other hand, stayed on the bookshelf behind the bar. One day years later I took my girlfriend to visit Jimmy and the brick at Cho Cho’s. They said Jimmy had retired and sold the restaurant. When I asked if there was a brick behind the bar (hoping they would give it to me!) they smiled and said Jimmy took the brick with him. I dont know if Jimmy is still alive but I bet that Brautigan’s brick is out there somewhere.

Much like the famous (and famously ignored) memo warning Bush about Bin Laden, we now have the documentation that spells out exactly what a President McCain plans to do to our country. He plans on bankrupting us to the tune of FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS plus change. Once bankrupted, and with eternal war overseas (just like in Orwell’s 1984) there will simply be no money left for any domestic spending. Everything the federal government does to protect and defend individuals from monied interests will be swept aside, along with the entire social safety net that gives workers the cushion they need to be able to participate in a true democracy. McCain’s plan is nothing short of the destruction of the United States of America, leaving only a cratered and pockmarked landscape of terrorized and poverty stricken serfs.

Unlike any terrorist you’ve ever been told to be afraid of, the real threat to our “way of life” is now coming from the 5th Column right here in our midst. I speak of the small army of demolitionists who have been working like termites to destroy our institutions from within. The goal is nothing short of total destruction of democracy, the U.S. Constitution, unions, the environment, civil rights, and the only force in the country currently able to defend any of those things: The United States Government.

How are these secret villains planning to do this dastardly deed? Grover Norquist said it best: “to shrink government until it is small enough to drown in the bathtub.” Oh yes, not the military part of the “government”, or the elements that can be used to implement a police state, but all of the parts that protect us (by “us” I refer to the 98% of us who are not members of the ruling elite) from being steamrollered by corporations and the super-rich who own them. Yes, I am talking “class war” here, not because I am a radical, but because that’s just what is actually happening in the real world.

John McCain is a desperate man. He knows that this is his last chance to seize the reigns of power. He has made the fateful decision to toss out every scruple, every moral, every principle he ever had and bow before the Great God Mammon who rules behind the throne. He has decided that the anti-democratic forces will decide the next election despite the actual vote tally. That is precisely what happened in 2000 and 2004, so he might be betting correctly.

2006 involved obvious majorities in too many districts to safely fake, although careful studies reveal that many close elections were still stolen - the tidal wave of Democratic victories should have been larger. Does McCain know something we don’t? Maybe the election stealing machine is ready to blatantly fake the results. Maybe the corporate paymasters feel that they can force their media hacks to knowingly lie about the facts, instead of massage and obfuscate but slip in the truth in tiny drips to assuage their consciences.

All we can really hope for is that the coming election will be such an obvious landslide that fraudulent results will just be too visible, even if the media lies about it. They might actually still try it, since there was no real outrage when the Supreme Court nullified the 2000 election and appointed Bush. We just have to hope that most Americans are willing to go out into the streets to defend their country. We may not actually have to do it if we can just convince the oligarchs that we are WILLING to do it. Are we?

The Constitution is under attack! Where are the patriots? -Blake

With all of the news coverage of the disaster in Burma/Myanmar these days there is great confusion about whether it is correct to call the country Myanmar or Burma. What makes such a decision so complex is that the politically-correct rules we have become used to give different results depending on how much you actually know about the politics in the country. Most importantly, you are both right and wrong in using either name - so try not to be smug, arguing is pointless. However, there is a final answer.

The standard rule is that you use the native name, not the colonial era name, IF the country pushes the issue. So we now call “Peking” “Beijing”, and “Ceylon” “Sri Lanka”. This is an excellent rule, but not always easy to apply, since it requires figuring out how strongly the natives feel about the issue and balancing that against the confusion factor of changing the name. This can result in a period where both names are used, as in “Mumbai (formerly Bombay).”

The problem with the standard rule as it applies to Burma is that the “natives” are not represented by the ruling military junta. Burma is the colonial era name, and “Myanmar” is what the ethnic majority of the country would call themselves, but since the ruling junta picked the new name the pro-democracy movement decided to ask the world to continue calling the country “Burma”.

So what is more politically-correct? Use the “native” name that the government is asking the world to use, althought that government is a vicious and cruel military dictatorship, or use the colonial name “Burma” as requested by the democratic movement within the country. Here’s a useful quote from Deutsche Welle:

“Myanmar is a kind of indicator of countries that are soft on the regime,” Mark Farmener of Burma Campaign in the UK told the BBC. “But really it’s not important. Who cares what people call the country? It’s the human rights abuses that matter.”

I would choose the pro-democracy side, hence “Burma”. But, and here’s the most important part, we need to be careful not to judge anyone who uses “Myanmar” as somehow being regressive. I have already heard radio blowhards attacking people for saying “Burma”. This really is a no-win argument. -Blake

The Goliath killer is on the march, as the WINE project readies the 1.0 version of its Windows “environment” for the Linux operating system. Not familiar with the WINE project? The first thing you need to know is that WINE is not an emulator. No, seriously, that’s what “WINE” is an acronym for: (W)INE (I)s (N)ot an (E)mulator. Part of an endless series of programmer inspired acronyms based on recursion, where the acronym contains the acronym itself, GNU being another example (GNU’s not Unix), or the ultimate example “C++”. Talk about inside pool.

WINE is a collection of code that runs on Linux providing an interface layer that allows a native Windows program to think it is running on a regular Windows machine. WINE “catches” all the calls to Windows APIs, processes them the way Windows would, and returns the expected responses. The result is that you can have a machine running Linux but still have direct access to your favorite Windows programs. That is, as long as your favorite programs are on the list of WINE compatible programs. The main problem with the WINE project is that each Windows program requires individual attention to make WINE able to run it. The result is that rare or unpopular programs frequently do not work under WINE.

WINE, like Linux or OpenOffice, is an open source project. There is a for-profit project based on WINE called Code-Weavers that has improved WINE code to work with all the main business-related programs that people use. Code-Weavers also offer support, which can be very handy when many programs require specific tweaking within WINE.

If Linux is going to replace Windows as the universal desktop OS a key element will be allowing users to continue to have access to their legacy Windows apps during the transition period. There are many native Linux applications that can take the place of Windows favorites, but there are many more Windows programs that have no Linux counterpart. As of right now there are several strategies that are available to a power user who is not afraid of some delicate and dangerous work:

1. Dual Boot. Partition your hard drive and install Windows on one partition and Linux on another and use a boot manager to allow you to use either OS when you start your computer.
2. Emulation. Install a virtual machine, like VirtualBox or VMware, that will trick your operating systems into thinking that they are running on independent machines that communicate through a virtual network.
3. Emulation. Ahem, I said it! WINE simply translates Windows calls into Linux calls, lets Linux do the work, and then translates return messages.

The slickest, and safest method that I have tried is the virtual machine method. What is truly amazing is the latest setup where you can have a Linux toolbar across the bottom of your screen, a Windows (running in a virtual machine) toolbar along one side of the screen, and even another virtual OS (another Linux?) along another edge of the screen. The difference between this method and WINE’s approach is that you need a copy of evil Windows for the virtual machine to run. If you want to be legal (and avoid the complexities of tricking an illegal copy of Windows into running) that copy will have to be paid for. Many of us have old copies of Windows lying around, but XP and VISTA both have aggressive validation built in, which means you will have to officially uninstall any previous installation from that install disc, and somehow prove that to Microsoft before you can use that disc (fully paid for!) to install on your virtual machine. And that is why there is a WINE project.

Oh, and here is my thumbnail diatribe against Microsoft (for you soft-heads out there): the OS is like water or electricity, it is a natural monopoly. The magical marketplace that fosters innovation works best when basic resources (like the OS) are fixed. Microsoft’s defacto ownership of the basic resource underlying the entire computer industry gives them an unlimited supply of capital that can be used to back all of their other non-OS initiatives. This allows Microsoft to obliterate small companies with great technology, companies that would have flourished in the ideal open marketplace that the anti-regulation people are always promoting. Unfortunately, because Microsoft can buy its way into any market segment, there is little incentive to provide a quality product. And so, drum roll please, their software is always crap. After the competition is gone, and they have had years to patch up their originally terrible software, users finally get something approaching what they could have had from the companies that were killed off at the beginning. Years later. And for more $$$$.

The OS monopoly is a bad thing. I don’t blame MS for wanting to keep it, but we really need to work on taking it away from them. WINE is a start. -Blake

As if by magic I post about how we need Aaron Brown to return to television, and within a day JoanM posts a comment about how Aaron IS returning to television. Here is the blurb from the PBS Wide Angle website:

Acclaimed international reporter and news commentator Aaron Brown will return to the anchor chair this summer as the new host of WIDE ANGLE, the weekly primetime international affairs series on PBS. With his engaging, award-winning brand of insight and analysis, Brown will bring substantive understanding of worldwide issues to American audiences. Among the topics to be explored: the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Darfur; the young Chinese generation poised to take the reins of an emerging superpower; pioneering midwives in Mozambique, the re-emergence of Japan’s military; and one of the most significant refugee crises in history, the displacement of more than two million Iraqi civilians.

“Aaron brings a quarter century of distinguished journalism experience to our viewers,” said Pamela Hogan, executive producer of WIDE ANGLE. “His incisive ability to interpret world affairs is a perfect complement to our mission – to draw on front-page news and under-reported stories from around the world to help Americans better understand how these issues impact our lives.”

The announcement is from one week ago, but has yet to trickle through the internets (all those tubes are so full of other gunk). I did multiple searches for Aaron before my post of a few days ago, but nothing new popped up. Aaron is doing a radio show as well, also on PBS. The main website appears to be at http://aaronbrown.kjzz.org/. It looks like the radio show HAS ALSO JUST STARTED! Here’s a quote from the online Aaron Blog:

Here is what we are trying to do. We want to create a program that takes a couple of important issues of the week and kick them around for a bit each weekend. We would throw in a few odds and ends to make the medicine go down a bit easier but at its heart it will still be a program about the events that are shaping our lives. The big, the important and sometime the under-reported. We will look at them through new eyes when we can and stay away from the usual characters that populate the world of modern media. It is amazing how many smart people there are out there who don’t do three minute cable TV interviews.

The show looks like it will be every Saturday at 3pm on KJZZ. Is that 2pm Pacific Time? You can listen to the latest show by downloading it HERE.

I am skinny. Everyone agrees. I am not currently as skinny as I have been in the past, but I am still on the skinny side. According to the Calorie Restriction Diet Calculator I need to reduce my food intake by 21.7%. ?!! Yikes! I am already a Vegetarian, with the exception of occasional fish, but I probably do eat too many sweets, too many carbs, and too much cheese. Actually, that list looks like an excellent meal, put it on a plate! So if someone who is already skinny has to starve themselves, what kind of diet are we talking about?

Websites like www.calorierestriction.org and www.walford.com will explain to you that research has shown that (on average) a restriction to 2/3 of normal caloric intake will extend the lifespan of creatures studied (rats, worms, fruit flies) by 1/3 or more. If the average human lives to 75, then calorie restriction would change that average to 100. If the maximum human lifespan is 120, then the new maximum would be 160. 160 years of living on a starvation diet, and looking like a walking skeleton! Hey, the fruit flies didn’t seem to mind. . .

I’m sorry, but that just isn’t for me. If I were Roy Batty, the engineered human replicant from Blade Runner, designed with a 3 year lifespan, then 33% more would be very tempting. Or I could just find the chief designer of human replicants back on earth and force him to “give me more life, fucker!”. Ok, so I love that movie a little too much.

A better solution is the new drug Resveratrol that manages to recreate some of the same biological processes that calorie restriction seems to produce. It was discovered while studying the health giving properties of red wine. In fact, Resveratrol is simply the active ingredient from red wine grapes extracted and purified. But red wine intake combined with Resveratrol pills are still unlikely to produce the full effects of calorie restriction. What we need is a pill designed specifically for the purpose.

New pills are on the way, thanks to research that has pinpointed the gene SIRT1 in mammals to be the pivot point for the calorie restriction miracle. The pills are not ready yet, so you will have to keep downing those bottles of red wine (or taking Resveratrol, which is available all over the place), but once a pill is available, expect it to be EVERYWHERE! I doubt there many side-effects that people would not put up with - furry palms, tails, antennae, a thumb protruding from the forehead - just to live a little bit longer. Do I need to quote Roy Batty again?

“I have seen things you people couldn’t believe; attack ships off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams at the Tannhauser gate. All these things will be lost in time….like tears in the rain….[moody Vangelis xylophone chimes]….Time….to…die……..”

I want more life! -Blake

Aaron Brown, the former CNN news anchor, needs to get back on the air, pronto! I don’t care if it is anchoring a nightly newscast, hosting a talk show, or producing weekly documentaries, he just needs to get back into the mix. CNN has gone straight down the toilet since Aaron left, and that is not a coincidence. CNN decided to mimic FOX News, and the first thing they needed to do was force out Aaron Brown - the Anti-FOX news anchor. If FOX makes the nation sick with disinformation and distortion, a dose of Aaron’s calm, unbiased delivery of facts IS the antidote.

Aaron Brown needs to either leave the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism in Arizona, or find a weekly gig (like Face the Nation or Meet the Press) that would allow him to keep his post in Academia but still contribute to the national IQ. We already know that FOX News is just the propaganda wing of the Republican party (which would be OK with me if they didn’t lie about it), and CNN has Glenn Beck (biology’s answer to the question: “if a toilet could talk, what would it say?”), but MSNBC is all over the map, from Olbermann to Joe Scarborough, all shouting at the top of their lungs. If one of the main networks won’t snap Aaron up (hey, talking to you CBS!) then MSNBC should grab him and maybe sacrifice some of the many hours devoted daily to prisoners shanking each other.

If you remember Aaron Brown, but can’t quite understand why so many of us miss him, just try to imagine how Aaron would have dealt with the Reverend Wright tape loop. You know he would have deconstructed the media frenzy as it was happening, explaining why he was NOT going to devote entire hours to it unless something newsworthy actually happened, and then he would have proceeded to discuss world starvation, global climate change, trillion dollar wars, the coming attack on Iran, ongoing torture, destruction of the Constitution, outlaw corporations taking jobs overseas and using child slave labor . . . all information that an informed citizenry would need to know in order to make intelligent decisions. Without Aaron Brown in the mix, look at what we get. -Blake

As a fellow with the handle Strider once said, “All that is gold does not glitter.”

Meaning, in the context of current US politics, being paid off doesn’t always equate to more shekels in one’s bank account. Sometimes it’s value is best determined by using a different currency - one measured in percentage points.

I can remember when Jimmy Carter, our president, went on TV wearing a sweater, telling us that maybe it was a good idea to turn our thermostats down. And he tried to promote the wacky idea of solar energy, and suggested that maybe not using so much oil might be a prudent thing. And this was thirty years ago.

The point being…

It IS possible for America to elect a president that puts the interests of Americans first. We’ve done it before. And we have a chance to do that this time around. But there are powerful interests - VERY powerful interests - who would much rather maintain the status quo. And these interests own the media which produces the news seen, heard, and read by over 90% of Americans. And these interests are the ones training the cameras on the likes of the “Reverend” Wright.

The point is, the establishment wants a McCain-Clinton matchup, because that means they can’t lose. Obama is the wildcard. When he was perceived as a non-threatening feel-good story, the media was happy enough to give him neutral coverage. Now that the powers that be see that he might actually WIN, they’re scrambling as fast as they can to make sure that doesn’t happen.

The media are people, I’ll give them that. They like to see themselves as good neo-liberals who care about the environment and would never harm a fellow human being (especially one “of color”). So the form of assassination they practice aims not for the person, but for his or her character. And if that character is unassailable, they just invent one that isn’t.

Bullets killed the dream embodied by Lincoln and two Kennedy brothers. The establishment is hoping that this time that job will be a lot less bloody, but no less effective.

It’s up to us as Americans to prove them wrong. - Sean

Heard of the capicitor? The resistor? The inductor? Well those are the three basic units that all electronic circuits are made from. Until now. The “Memristor” was predicted as a potential 4th basic unit of electronics back in the 70s, but a working example was not created until very recently.

From the Memristor entry on Wikipedia:

A memristor effectively stores information because the level of its electrical resistance changes when current is applied. Where a typical resistor provides a stable level of resistance, a memristor can have a high level of resistance which can be interpreted in a computer as a “1″ in data terms, and a low level can be interpreted as a “0.” Thus, data can be recorded and rewritten by controlling current.

Tom’s Hardware Guide has a brief article on the discovery, and New Scientist has a longer article.

The freaky thing about memristors is that they seem to function in a way that is similar to neurons. From New Scientist:

The way memristors handle current and voltage is startlingly similar to the way synapses between brain cells do, says Chua. Both build up voltage to a threshold before firing and letting a current pass.

This could allow entirely new forms of computer processors and memory chips to be created that function in ways similar to our own brains, but with the speed of semiconductor circuits. In some ways this new discovery could be likened to the discovery of a fourth spatial dimension. In combination with capicitors, resistors, and inductors the new memristor will allow almost infinite variations on all of the electronic circuits that have been created up to this point, just add memristors and voila: magic! I really need some. I have no idea what I would do with them, but I would like a big pile of them right now. -Blake

I saw Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s appearance on Bill Moyers this weekend and was impressed with his intellect, but also his gentleness. He took pains to relate the biblical context surrounding his sermon. But this man’s words were lifted out of the context of a sermon and used for political purposes to smear Sen. Obama.

I consider this tactic to be the same one used by the media to smear Howard Dean in the last election cycle: take audio and video out-of-context that makes someone look extreme then repeat it over and over.

Do we expect a candidate to refrain from yelling at his campaign rallies? It would be just as ridiculous to insist that a preacher to remain strictly factual and calm during a sermon.

Let’s just quit paying attention to cheap insubstantial smear campaigns.

As for Rev. Wright’s comments:
1)Though it is hard to believe the US Gov’t invented AIDS (any more than Al Gore invented the internet) it certainly has done little in 25 years for AIDS victims besides blame their ‘lifestyle’ for the disease. By the way, it’s those donuts and cupcakes that are giving you the diabetes and the stroke.
2)Any warm fuzzy feeling we have about our government should be tempered by the CIA/Crack epidemic/Iran-Contra connections established in the 80s, Three Mile Island, and the Love Canal.
3)Whether or not the US brought the events of Sept 11th on itself through foreign policy blunders, the government certainly did ignore intelligence of the impending attack.

These three ways the government failed its citizens can be explained either by malice or stupidity, neither very flattering for those in government at the time.

Let’s give Rev. Wright a break. What someone says in a sermon to whip up a congregation cannot be equated to an academic lecture or political policy speech. If American’s don’t like the concept of free speech, well: God damn them.

Sorry, I can’t resist posting these videos of animals. The first one is our cat, Rorschach, outside on a leash. He is an indoor only cat, and although he tries to escape out the door on occasion, he always runs back to the door terrified. He didn’t do much better on his leash.

This next video is of our Pygora Goats, Mr. Nibbles and Darwin (Darwin is the one with black markings on his face, Nibbles is the bigger, fluffier one). I let the goats loose into the back yard, now that our garden is fenced in they can’t destroy it. I had both our dogs out as well with chews. I stationed them at both points of potential escape. The one thing missing from the video is when Mr. Nibbles charged past Maisy in order to be naughty, and really for no other reason. When he charged, he knocked the video camera off the chair it was sitting on. I thought it was broken, but it worked after some fiddling.

Of course these videos (and the previous ones of our baby chicks in a previous post) will be of interest to our friends and family. But I can’t resist posting them! -Blake

UPDATE: Following is what I wrote immediately after watching the entire Rev. Wright speech to the NAACP on Sunday night. My reaction was that Wright was kinda like Farrakhan (who I used to watch on local cable access), but not crazy. Very animated, over-the-top, smart, funny, and NOT CRAZY. I might not agree with all that he said, but his points were well thought out. I stand by that, his speech to the NAACP was fine. And then he did his Monday morning press conference. So I guess he is kinda like Farrakhan, but he IS CRAZY. I can see where Obama might have been unclear about this guy, he’s not a simple character. The rest is my post from before the Monday press conference:

Until last night, my opinion of CNN had been spiraling steadily downward since the ousting of Aaron Brown. But last night they shocked me by showing Jeremiah Wright’s entire speech before the Detroit NAACP. What was even more shocking, was that it was Rick “Taserboy” Sanchez hosting. What I have seen of his reporting up until now has not impressed me. His sing-songy fratboy delivery rubs me the wrong way. But he handled the Wright speech very nicely.

As for Wright’s speech, I thought that it was excellent. For the record, I am not black, and I have little first-hand experience of black culture, but I do read and have curiosity about the world around me - so I actually had a clue as to the context of the out-of-context Jeremiah Wright clips that had been playing 24/7 in the news cycle. The intentional obtuseness of the chattering class while discussing the comments has been criminal.

Just to live down to my expectations some republican blowhard came on Sanchez’s show to try to drop a non-issue into the mix by saying that Wright’s comments about research showing that black children in America have a different learning pattern than children of European backgrounds WAS RACIST!

IN CONTEXT what he said was that American black culture is derived from African culture, and that children raised within that culture carry with them traits from that culture, one of which is a different pattern of learning (he called it “subject oriented” vs “object oriented”). The republican blowhard tried to insert the lie that he was saying black children were racially inferior! I can’t type what I would like to say about such lies and the lyers who say them, it would be much too crude.

Here’s a video from youtube of the introduction to Wright’s speech.

I liked this part a lot, as the speaker points out that Wright VOLUNTEERED for the Marines, as opposed to Cheney getting 5 (or more?) deferments, and Bush going AWOL. I still can’t believe that we let these chickenhawks steal an election and then send our troops into war. And then we let them steal another election from a legitimate war hero. Oh well, repeating the truth doesn’t really get us anywhere, the people who choose not to believe facts are really beyond all hope of redemption.

As for stolen elections, if you haven’t watched the HBO documentary “Hacking Democracy” yet, do it soon. If you think we are currently living in a democracy you had better wake up. Things are going down, and if the democratic candidate doesn’t win by overwhelming numbers in the fall, the Rovian criminal machine will be able to steal another one. -Blake

I just got “push-polled” by the Clinton campaign! The way the questions were worded it was clearly designed to “push” people toward the Clinton side of the lines. Although it was definitely a push-poll, it was pretty mild. There were no Karl Rove style claims about illegitimate black babies, like Bush did against McCain in 2000, but there was a good deal of “if you knew that Obama . . . would you be more or less likely to vote for him?”.

I’m afraid I wasn’t much help. I was totally honest and said I was voting for Obama and there was little Clinton could do to persuade me otherwise. I gave her high marks for some of her policy proposals, said that her attacks on Obama were the thing made me like her the least, and that her Iraq war vote was my top reason for choosing Obama. Plus, I am a union member living in a rural area.

So it looks like Oregon might actually matter this time around! I kinda want Obama to sew this thing up sooner than later, but on the other hand it is pretty nice to be able to vote in a real primary for once. Usually everything is over by the time things roll around to Oregon. It’s sort of flattering to be push-polled, makes me feel like I’m worth the trouble of trying to trick. -Blake

If one were to live in a rounded hobbitish house, with domed ceilings and circular doors, where could you find furniture to fit? What is needed is something that can be molded to fit, undulating with the contours of the space. Paper Mache just might fit the bill, although there are many problems to be overcome. Resourceful craftshobbits of the Shire know how to work simple magic, and here are some of their spells.

First step is to visit http://www.papiermache.co.uk/, where you can find all sorts of recipes. Water and flour is the basic recipe, but does not last. White glue and wallpaper paste are stronger and last longer. Special techniques for preparing the paper may include boiling and grinding to free the fibers and make a glop that can be sculpted more easily than layered strips.

Once you have a recipe for your sloppy paper mache glop, you have to figure out how to support the structure you want to build. The wet paste will just slump into a blob by itself. For angular structures like tables and chairs you can use a cardboard skeleton and build out from there. Cardboard has the advantage of being a paper product, so your creation will be “pure”, and it also bonds well with the mache coating. The disadvantage is the limited shapes you can create with cardboard alone.

Metal wire and/or chicken wire can be used, much as it is used in ferrocement construction. The difficulty is in shaping the wobbly wire into the shape you want. The wire tends to move around during mache application, and will sag in unsupported areas. Because of the wire structure inside the final product, the item will have superior strength, and if it breaks the wire will still hold it together.

Probably the best technique for creating large freeform structures with paper mache would be to use small molds to create pieces that can be paper-mached together. For example, a paper mache desk could be created by first making 4 legs, a freeform desktop, drawer fronts, and handles all separately. Then the pieces, once dried, can be attached with screws and a layer of mache slopped all over. Finally, regular metal and wood pieces can be affixed for the drawers and the paper mache drawer faces and handles placed on the “public” side.

Whatever you make with paper mache, the final problem is a finish that will be durable, protect the paper mache from water damage, and hold in the natural dust that paper mache wants to give off. A house filled with un-finished paper mache would be inches deep in fine dust! The selection of finish can be a trade-off between keeping the material all-natural, or using powerful laquers that some might consider “cheating”, but will add a great amount of strength. A final option would be to use the new ceramic concrete material called Grancrete, which you can read about elsewhere on this blog. Grancrete would add a waterproof exterior and also add strength. The only possible problem with it might be cracking or shattering if hit with some force, but we are talking about paper mache here, so you can expect it to be damaged if you smash it with a hammer!

Here is an artist named Schmulb who makes paper mache art-furniture:

Why paper mache and not concrete or stucco? The simple answer is: cheap, light, easy to make, not permanent. A concrete shelf built into a wall is a permanent decision. Don’t like your paper mache shelving unit? Break it up, haul it outside, and compost it or burn it! Remodel finished. I will continue my paper mache dreaming, which goes back many years (read my previous post). My imaginary hobbit house just gets cozier by the day. - Blake

Little did I suspect these little featherdusters had a secret plan to dominate the world. First they took over a whole room of our house, then they covered it in a fine dust, then they filled it with squawking and crashing sounds, then they went totally crazy. Not a day goes by without some dramatic jailbreak, as these fluffy criminals make a run for the border - or at least under the bed. Evidence of their many crimes can be seen all over the floor, and those that cannot be seen can certainly be smelled! Here are two videos that document the steady progress they are making towards their final goal of world domination.

First we have the innocent babies, under a week old, just learning to use a roost. Of course they were only using it as a launch pad for future schemes!

Second we see their onslaught on the great outdoors. Finally they have broken free of all fetters, and goosestepping (or chickenstepping) onward towards destiny. The earth trembles before them. Behold! CHICKENS ARISE!

I will post more videos of the rise of this terrible force of chick-rage, if I survive . . . For now I am just barely able to fend them off, but as they grow it is inevitable that I shall one day succumb. Any time my back is turned they leap onto my shoulders and whisper their orders into my ears. “Bring food. Bring treats. I will obey!” And I find myself unable to resist their tiny commands. Soon I shall have no will of my own, I will be but a tool for the conquest of the earth by chicken-kind. First the state of Oregon, and then the world. You have been warned. -Blake

How do I love thee, Stephen Colbert? Let me count the ways. . . There are so many things I like about Stephen Colbert, like his fearless improv abilities channeling Bill Orally (preferred spelling of his name, according to Keith Olbermann), and his razor sharp wit, and his politics, and his sci-fi epic book series / cartoon series Tek Jansen . . .

But the thing that just puts it over the top for me is his unabashed love of J.R.R. Tolkien. Every time he fits in a Tolkien reference, or a D&D reference, my heart just goes all aflutter. On Larry King the other night, he was asked directly about why he loves reading and re-reading Tolkien, and his answer was heart-felt and deep. I had the feeling that Colbert loves Tolkien the way Sam Gamgee loves Frodo Bagins. Such love knows no limits.

Heres a link to a youtube video of the interview.

But even more to the point, we recently got the first couple of discs of The Flight of the Conchords from Netflix, and they have a music video about Frodo and the One Ring. The episode with the video is on the second disc. The first disc has the David Bowie video, which is also awesome, but has nothing to do with Stephen Colbert and J.R.R. Tolkien.

o Frodo, what you doin’ wearing the ring?
All powerful jewelry, is that your new thing?
I know it’s hard when you’re little more than 3 foot 4
Your little ass so close to the floor.
Trying to lead the fellows to the gates of Mordor
The Fellowship!
(Yea the fellowship)
I don’t rap about bitches and hos,
I rap about witches and trolls,
just passing on the words of the Elven king,
Wisdom to all

Ok, it looks like I’ll have to include a link to a Tek Jansen cartoon as well. It can’t be helped. Not related to Tolkien or Larry King, but once I start thinking about it I just can’t stop. Tek is just so ripped and sexy, and the way he makes out with alien women is just so true to life.

Tek Jansen Cartoon.

So, as you can clearly see, when Larry King challenges Stephen Colbert to physical combat, the only true winner is valiant Frodo Baggins, as long as he listens to The Flight of the Conchords and does not put on the One Ring. Tek Jansen would agree, it is only logical. -Blake

If you type: “Oregon senate hook” into Google you will get a link to Steve Novick’s campaign page. Why? Because he is running for Gordon Smith’s Senate seat. And he has a hook for a hand. Oh, and he’s very short. And, if you read his website, you will discover that he’s one hell of a candidate. He is right on the money for every issue that I care about (i.e. progressive/liberal/libertarian), and he has an amazing sense of humor about his hand and his height.

If we could replace Gordon Smith with Steve Novick, I could really be proud of our state. I’m already pretty proud to tell people that I’m from Oregon (born and raised), but having “that Senator with the hook” would just about kill me with glee.

There is so much frenzy going on with the Presidential primary, that it is easy to forget about the local races. It is looking like Novick is going to get the nomination fairly easily, but then the real work will begin.

Gordon Smith has that Oregon Republican way of coming across as an easy-going, likable guy who wouldn’t screw you over except by accident. He might actually be likable, I don’t personally know him, but he is a Republican, and that means Big Business over all (I would have typed “Uber Alles”, but the whole Nazi meme is so overplayed). Maybe not a bad guy, who knows, but not the Senator to represent Oregon values.

I’m going to vote for Novick, and in the general campaign I will do what I can to help him out. Between Obama for Prez and Novick for Senate, this could be the best election season of my lifetime. OMG, he has a BEER! Order your Left Hook Lager today. This is just too much. I may just have to buy some beer, you know, to support my candidate! -Blake

OK, so it isn’t brewed entirely from beets, but the small amount of beet juice that I added made ALL of the rich ruby coloring.

I used Extra Light Malt Extract, only crystal malt for flavor grains (and the essential enzymes), some ginger, Simcoe hops for bittering, Cascade hops for aroma and flavor, and several organic beets put through a juicer. The picture above was from several months ago. And now it is gone.

Solution? Brew more! I have the ingredients to make another batch sometime this week. Since the beet beer I have brewed a chocolate stout and a German-style ale (lots of Vienna and Munich malts), but now is time for more beet beer. The magic combo is: 7 lbs X-Light extract, 2 pounds cracked crystal malt grains for flavor, one large hunk of fresh shredded ginger, 3 or 4 small fresh beets juiced, 1 ounce Cascade hops for flavor, and 2 ounces Simcoe hops for bittering. That’s for 5 gallons.

Our neighbor decided to burn down his old barn in order to make room for a house, so we asked if we could take some of the metal off first. We’ve been storing our 30 bales of hay in his barn for years, and now we need to add a lean-to onto our small goat barn to store this year’s hay when it comes. Here’s the barn after stripping, and before burning:

Here’s the barn after the burning began:

Here’s the barn after the explosive Whoooosh of flames engulfed it in an inferno:

And so ends the life of a rural barn in America, not with a whimper but with a bang (props to T.S. Elliot). -Blake