Flavors of Daylight

Just possessed an e-mail out of my Mom.

2012-01-13T19:11:00.003-05:00

There's spam, and then there's art:

Just possessed an e-mail out of my Mom. Her as well as my dad want a new home and are from a loan. I'm 26 and merely started a powerful IVA and live aware of them. The parents are typically there 50s and have gleaming than bright white credit records data. They have never ever missed bills, havent gained any existing debt (save for property finance loan), few bank cards with 0 balances that can be used however , cleared regarding pay day. They already have never happen to be refused credit ranking until now! Some people applied using Santander who declined. Then implemented with Sainsburys which accepted however a higher rate. Our mum chosen to see if the woman could add on to the mortgage loan but said they couldnt knowning that there was a communication with a 'bankruptcy warning' placed on their file. I have not skepticism that this is as a direct link between me moving into an IVA. When I put into the Individual voluntary arrangement I had no idea it may possibly affect people my family having the capability to obtain california payday loan? Will it be because I actually live acquainted with them?

Tablet Litmus Test: Do I Need It?

2012-01-08T20:26:00.006-05:00

This post will not be an exhaustive pro/con review of purchasing a tablet. I just want to share one insight synthesized from both my own tablet use and the discussions and articles I've followed for the past year regarding tablets and the alternatives (netbooks and laptops in one direction, e-readers and media players in the other).

Reactions to tablets are mixed. Some owners and bystanders alike are left scratching their heads, asking, "What is this good for?" For some people, the cost is trivial enough that the redundancy alone is worthwhile: an extra browsing screen, an extra music player, a movie screen in a pinch, and an extra-large Angry Birds machine. Most of us, though, don't want to drop even $200-300 for a budget model, much less $400-800 for an iPad or Transformer, if we're only going to use it for five minutes once a week.

My test, and the one disgruntled tablet owners seem to have failed to apply, is this: is there one task for which this will be my primary and preferred device? In other words, know why before you buy.

Many satisfied tablet owners, like myself, wanted a not-quite-so-dedicated e-reader, or more specifically a reader for highly visual media like magazines and comics. Others saw a space in their daily routine where they'd want to watch movies out of reach of their televisions or PCs. For others, just having something bigger than a phone and smaller than a laptop to curl up with while watching TV was enough. Yes, a lot of the tablet's value rests in being a general-purpose computer, but we also had in mind a single purpose that it would serve better than any other device in our stable.

If your current arrangement works just fine--if you always need a laptop handy anyway, or must have e-ink for novels and don't read magazines, or WiFi wouldn't cut it for your mobile browsing and you don't want another bill--then don't get a tablet.

Selectively migrate Chrome bookmarks with TabCloud

2012-01-04T20:42:00.006-05:00

I just wanted to share a simple solution to what I thought would be a chore when I had to do it tonight: setting up a work profile in Chrome on my home PC. Late last year, Google made it easier to add multiple user accounts to Chrome, streamlining the first part of the process, but you're still starting from scratch with each new profile. In my case, I had about a dozen bookmarks I wanted to bring along, most as pinned tabs.

The simple solution, which I already had installed, was TabCloud. With the tabs open in my original profile, I saved them to TabCloud, made a new user, installed TabCloud, and restored. From that point, I just closed the window with the pinned tabs last, so that they'd be ready to go next time I need them. You could go from tab to tab clicking stars, too, to save everything as bookmarks, though it's all backed up in TabCloud, anyway.

UPDATE 1/8/12: I have since found it more trouble than it's worth to use a separate profile this way, and I'm just using the saved tab configuration in TabCloud as my work 'profile,' without changing Chrome users. YMMV.

Build a utility lap desk

2011-12-14T17:48:00.003-05:00

Lap desks aren't just for laptops. Particularly for the DIY-inclined apartment dweller, having some modular workspace that fits behind a bookcase or under the bed comes in handy.

If you want a smaller one for your MacBook or, the way I use my store-bought unit most, as a bedside mousepad, they're cheap or you can make your own. When it comes project time, though, I'd rather not mar my lap desk, my desk-desk, or my kitchen table, and I can always use more surface area.

In the way that projects beget projects, resurfacing some thrift-store furniture with contact paper inspired me to put together this beauty:

Refined, I know. The main components were an old bulletin board and some black packing foam, joined with contact cement. The frame was already broken, but it happens to be useful having two sides open, and the piece from the bottom makes a passable straight-edge. Scraps of contact paper provide some smooth surface area while the cork remains mostly exposed for cutting, pinning, or anything messy. I keep an old gift card and some thumbtacks on mine, but you could attach any kind of hardware, including screwing on a zippered pouch, pencil case, or divided storage bin to keep small tools, pencils, or a razor knife handy.

Here's the underside:

The foam came with some computer equipment and works great, being just pliant enough to be comfortable in the lap while providing a stable foundation.

If you don't have these exact materials on hand, consider what you do have. To me, DIY is all about re-purposing and improvisation, not drawing up a blueprint and driving to Big Box Hardware or Ikea. This beast has come in handy for half a dozen projects, plus serving standard lap desk duty when its petite, prettier counterpart is in another room.

The Reason for the Season

2011-11-14T12:08:00.002-05:00

RIM Roadkill

2011-11-11T15:04:00.005-05:00

Bicycle U-lock & Cable: Wrap & Stash

2011-11-03T10:25:00.015-04:00

I use a Kryptonite U-lock and plastic-sheathed steel cable to lock my bike up in the city--you can almost always find someplace secure to lock up in any given half-block stretch. It took some trial and error, though, to figure out how to carry the thing. I could never get the frame mount that came with the thing to stay in place on the frame, and of course the first time it came loose, the sheet of rubber meant to protect the frame was in the wind.

I ended up using the cable itself to secure the lock to the frame, and here's how I do it:

First, bring the ends together, folding the cable in half, then pass the bend through the two loops.

Next, drop the straight end of the U-bar through the hoops, with both the single and the doubled cable-bends on the outside of the U.

Pass the doubled cable-bend over the angled end of the U-bar, and use the single cable-bend to pull it just snug, not too tight. You don't want too much slack in the remaining length of cable.

Now wrap the single cable-bend around the straight side of the U-bar, and pass its loop over the angled end, just as you did the doubled bend.

And you're done! Attach to your frame as pictured, and the cable will provide enough tension to hold the lock firmly in place.

Depending on how sensitive you are about the paint job on your frame, you may want to wrap a bit of inner tube around the top of the frame where the top of the lock will rest, securing it with some tape. I was a little concerned at first that this arrangement might be hard on my rear brake cable, but it hasn't been a problem.

Cookies! Aztec Chocolate Sugar Cookies

2011-10-22T00:40:00.011-04:00

I'm a chocolate addict--not the vaguely brownish milk/sugar (or more often in the US, corn) concoctions in the candy aisle, but real cacao. At sufficient concentrations, it's a little intoxicating.

Now, these aren't 50%+ cacao Dagoba or Green & Black chocolate bars, but they do deliver a surprising punch of real chocolate flavor. I started with this recipe and added a little spice, as well as adjusting the prep to save time and get a great texture/consistency. Just enough cayenne (or any chile) can really open up a rich flavor like cocoa, and gets balanced by the sweetness of the sugar, so that it doesn't add heat so much as it enhances the other flavors.

This was my first foray into baking, by the way, so it's quite an easy recipe. Yield is about two dozen cookies.

Materials

At least:

2 large bowls (wet + dry ingredients)
1 mixing implement (e.g. wooden spoon)
1 clean, flat surface
1 oven
1 baking sheet

Optional (preferred):

1 electric hand mixer (step 2, start step 3)
1 sifter or whisk
1 more baking sheet
1 sharp, non-serrated knife (e.g. French chef's knife)
OR
1 dough cutter/scraper

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon cayenne
1/8 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter, shortening or margarine*, softened
1 1/4 cups white sugar
1 egg

*I like to use 1/4 cup butter and 1/2 cup margarine. I'll pop them in the oven in a coffee mug while I'm gathering ingredients. The oven's always above room temp just from the pilot lights.

Directions

Mix and/or sift* the flour, cocoa, baking powder, cinnamon, cayenne and salt. Set aside.
In a separate, large bowl, mix butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in the egg.
Gradually stir in the sifted ingredients to form a soft dough.
Divide dough in half and, on powdered surface**, roll into approx. 1 1/4 inch diameter logs.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). With a sharp knife or dough cutter, slice logs into 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick rounds. Toss each round in powder mixture and place on baking sheet, even spaced.
Bake for 10 to 15 minutes in the preheated oven.
Your call. I immediately use tongs to gently move the cookies from the baking sheet to a glass or ceramic surface, then let them cool for a good 45-90 minutes before loading my cookie jar (or sealed storage bag).
*As a novice baker, I don't have a sifter or even a strainer. I tried a colander, but that was slow, awkward and ineffective. The best method for me was my first improvisation: a quart bell jar, a butter knife, and a second, flat-bottom container. I put the ingredients in the jar (which also served as my dry measure for the cocoa and flour), stirred them together with the knife (not too vigorously), then used sweeping motions of the knife at the lip of the jar to sift the mixture into the second container. I played whack-a-mole with any visible clumps, and it all got a final sifting going into the dough. A whisk might be a better solution than even a sifter, and I'm not sure how a strainer would compare to my method--I suspect it would be as slow as a colander, almost as awkward, but much more effective.

**One would use flour for most recipes, but then you can get white splotches on your finished cookies and even blunt the flavor a little with that outer coating. I've found a 2/2/1 ratio of cocoa to flour to sugar works best to preserve the color and even give the flavor a little bump. I start with 1 Tablespoon each sugar and cocoa and 1/2 Tablespoon sugar, then replenish before I cut up the second log. I mix them right on the surface (I use a glass cutting board) with the dull top edge of the blade on the chef's knife I'll be using to slice the logs. You'll want your hands dusted with the mixture, too.

I could see adding maybe 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla in step 2, but haven't had it around while I've been making these. If you want to go double chocolate, 1/2 cup dark or semi-sweet chocolate chips are always an option, but this recipe really doesn't need them.

Working with Bootable SD Cards

2011-10-20T01:38:00.010-04:00

My experience with bootable SD media is specific to microSDHC cards in the Nook Color tablet/ereader, but the issues people encounter will probably apply to any device, particularly any Android device, that boots first from its SD reader. These issues are also largely Windows-specific, but some of the concepts apply more broadly.

The ability to boot first from external media makes modifying or repairing a device much simpler and more straightforward in a lot of ways, but it also introduces concepts and processes that may be as unfamiliar to veteran Android rooters and flashers as they are to total tech neophytes (aka n00bs).

Bootable Media

Anyone who has installed a computer operating system (OS) or run a Linux live disk is aware that nearly all full-fledged computers check to see if any of their optical drives (CD, DVD, Blu-Ray) and/or USB ports and/or flash card readers contain any bootable media before loading the OS on the primary system drive. Most programs run inside of an OS. For external media to be bootable, it must provide an alternate framework within which its program(s) can run: an OS of its own, however simplified in most cases. As long as all of the host device's hardware is intact, no matter how badly the native OS is screwed up or how tightly it's locked down, bootable external media can do things like reset factory defaults, run hardware diagnostics, in some cases extract, move, or erase data, or install a whole new OS.

No ADB? No Root? No Problem.

In terms of Android modding, particularly running custom ROMs (volunteer-built alternative OSes), bootable SDs allow us to skip some preliminaries like installing developer software packages and drivers on our PCs, rooting our device's stock firmware, and replacing stock recovery with custom utilities. It all but eliminates the risk of "bricking" (rendering the device permanently unable to boot), because again, no matter how badly you screw up the software, you can always plug in a bootable SD, wipe the system clean, and start over. Because you didn't overwrite the stock recovery, you may even have the option of triggering a built-in factory reset. Moreover, because SD cards are almost identical to an Android device's internal flash storage, complete custom ROMs can often be run stably from SD cards without altering the stock software at all.

Obstacles, Ordeals & Misunderstandings

While bootable SDs are often more direct, safer, and more flexible than other modding tools, they can also be less familiar and intuitive than some of the install-and-click root methods out there.

Software: You'll need a disk-imaging program like WinImage (shareware) or Win32DiskImager (free and open source). The latter is designed more with developers than average users in mind, and the installation process can be daunting. Both are intended more for backing up and managing images than writing a downloaded image to a new disk, so it's by no means obvious at first glance how to accomplish our task, though most modding guides give specific instructions. In WinImage, it's Disk | Restore Virtual Hard Disk Image on Physical Drive. Make sure you know your card's drive letter, then select file type All Files.
Hardware: Not all card readers that can read SD are reliable for writing images. Your laptop's all-in-one cardhole probably won't work. Even a regular-size SD slot and an adapter may not work. Some people (including me, making my first card) have success using a tablet, phone, or camera as their reader via USB, but if the connection is interrupted, the card may be rendered unreadable. Your best bet is a USB ɥSDHC reader, which are quite inexpensive. The other options are worth a try, but if the image isn't writing, the reader may be to blame.
Cards and Class: If you're only making the card to run a rooting utility or a custom recovery like ClockworkMod, any card will do. For running ROMs from SD, however, class 2, 4, and unclassed SanDisks seem to outperform most other cards. Card class measures only how fast a card can read and write large, sequential files, like high-megapixel digital photos; indeed, few devices other than a newer SLR camera will benefit in any way from a class 10 card. An OS relies more heavily upon small, random reads and writes, which are not measured by card class and often suffer in higher-class cards.
Partitions: Some bootable images, particularly a complete OS, will need to divide the card into multiple partitions (separate virtual disks on one physical disk) to function properly, but Windows Explorer only looks for the first partition. So, Windows may tell you your 8GB SD is now only 103MB: DON'T PANIC. It's perfectly normal. If you need to erase the card, use SD Formatter. If you still don't see the whole card, use EASEUS Partition Manager's slider interface to delete all but one partition and stretch that one to take up the remaining space on the card, then format again.
Downloads: they get corrupted sometimes. Check the md5 sum of your image files if available, or if an image doesn't write successfully, delete and re-download.

Your Nook Color Options: Root & ROMs

Updating a CM7 SD install for the Nook Color

2011-10-20T00:31:00.010-04:00

With the recent release of a signed, stable version of CM7.1, many people are trying for the first time, in some cases after months, to update their SD installs. Now, there's more than one SD install out there. These instructions apply only to cards prepared using verygreen's SASD method. If you used another method, such as a size-specific SD image of CM7, or a pre-made Phiremod/Honeycomb dual boot card, consider this step zero: backup with Titanium Backup, wipe the card, and either make a SASD or consider other options.

To update a verygreen SASD running one of the CM7.0.x builds to CM7.1,

Download the update for the installer/bootloader: http://crimea.edu/~green/nook/update-genimage-1.3.zip*
Download the CM7.1 zip: http://download.cyanogenmod.com/get/update-cm-7.1.0-encore-signed.zip
Download latest gapps (not required, but a good idea): http://cmw.22aaf3.com/gapps/gapps-gb-20110828-signed.zip*
Remove the SD from your NC and plug it into your computer
Move the first two files to the SD card (you will only see a 100MB-ish partition; that's where they go). If both won't fit, do the installer update first.
Confirm that the files are still .zip format (some people accidentally unzip them due to their PC settings)
Return the card to the NC and boot into the SD's alt partition (the installer): "hold nook N key and then press and hold power until the "Loading..." message appears and then disappears with screen going blank. Release power button, then press it again and hold for ~5 seconds, the bootloader "Loading..." message should be on the screen for three seconds or so before you release power button, keep holding N button until screen blanks again. If the screen went off while you were holding the power key, that means you were holding it for too long"
The installer will automatically install the package(s).
Repeat steps 4-7 for the remaining files.

*For most ROM udpates on a SASD, the installer update and gapps package would not be necessary. If you're already running a CM7 nightly more recent than #86, the installer update won't be necessary. They're only needed if you're moving from a CM7.0.x stable release to CM7.1. It is a good idea to update gapps if there's a more recent package at the bottom of this page.

As of now, there is no user-friendly update path from 7.0.x to 7.1 for any SD install other than verygreen's SASD, AFAIK. In the months that CM7.1 has been under development, the SASD has become very much the standard method for running CM7 from SD on the NC. If you purchased a pre-made CM7 card, check the vendor's website for update information.

Your Nook Color Options: Root & ROMs

2011-10-04T06:30:00.008-04:00

The Nook Color has seen a lot of modding, hacking and customization, due to its low cost, under-utilized hardware, and highly flexible, nigh-unbrickable configuration. After nearly a year of both regular firmware updates from B&N and furious volunteer development, the array of hacks, mods, custom ROMs and utilities for this device can appear sprawling.

What it comes down to, however, are three main options. All of them take advantage of the configuration that makes the NC so flexible in the first place; unlike most Android devices, the NC boots first from the ɥSD slot, in the same way a PC looks first for a bootable disk before loading the OS on the primary hard drive. As with a PC, this configuration makes it very easy to run a utility, install an OS, or even run an OS completely from bootable* ɥSD.

Rooting

When used as a verb, rooting means altering your current stock firmware to enable root, or superuser, access. Like having the Administrator account on a Windows PC, root allows you to change high-level settings such as those preventing you from installing unapproved apps, and accessing unapproved app markets. Rooting the NC maintains the stock interface, the stock reading app, and device-specific perks like in-store reading, but lets you install the Google and/or Amazon app markets, which have many more apps than the B&N market, often at lower prices. Apps purchased on those markets can also be installed on other Android devices.

If you basically like the NC's interface but would like a couple more apps, rooting may be your best option. The most common way to root the NC is ManualNooter. If rooting stock firmware 1.4.x, follow the linked instructions but use ManualNooter 5.12.20.

Custom ROMs (OS replacement)

Custom ROMs are volunteer-built operating systems that completely replace stock firmware when installed on a device. Virtually all custom ROMs have root access by default, and do not need to be rooted. Because we can boot from ɥSD, it's also not necessary for us to root before installing a custom ROM, as is necessary on many other Android devices. For the NC, there are three ROMs worth considering, and one to rule out.

CyanogenMod7: The CyanogenMod project is a robust team of developers releasing nightly improvement of their ROMs for a variety of Android devices. CM7, a version of Android 2.3 Gingerbread, is by far the the most feature-rich and flexible ROM for the NC, with the most community support. CM developers have added features like bluetooth, Tablet Tweaks, audio improvements, USB host, and more to the NC. Replacing B&N stock with CM7.
MiRaGe CM7.2 KANGs: With the CM7 team no longer providing quasi-nightly test builds, this ROM is the simplest way to keep up on the latest changes until there's a new stable CM7 build.
MIUI: a popular makeover of Gingerbread's UI, brought to the NC using CM7 codebase.
Honeycomb: the only versions of Honeycomb available for the NC are basically demos and are not being updated. Honeycomb is the only Android version for which Google has not released source code, so there is very little for devs to work with.

Custom ROMs (ɥSD install)

The NC's fairly unique configuration opens up a third option that leaves the stock firmware untouched and arguably preserves your warranty (though I still wouldn't mention it to customer service). Because it boots first from a ɥSD card, and that card is virtually identical to the internal flash storage (eMMC), it's possible to run a custom ROM entirely from ɥSD. This option is probably the best place for most people to start, even if you think you'll eventually be replacing the stock firmware. It's a fairly simple procedure that leaves you in a good position to make future changes if you decide they're necessary. With the right card (see instructions), many people find ɥSD installs to perform just as well as an OS housed on eMMC.

Installing CM7 to SD.

Beyond

For the more adventurous or more particular, you'll find a variety of projects on the xda-developers NC forums, such as moving your stock firmware to ɥSD. I've also assembled a guide for dual booting two OSes from eMMC.

____________________________________________________

*Perhaps the least familiar aspect of all these methods, where a lot of people run into trouble, is writing a bootable image to ɥSD. A couple of things to keep in mind:

Your laptop's all-in-one cardhole probably won't work. Even a regular-size SD slot and an adapter may not work. Some people (including me, making my first card) have success using the NC, a phone, or a camera as their reader via USB, but if the connection is interrupted, the card may be rendered unreadable. Your best bet is a USB ɥSDHC reader, which are quite inexpensive.
Downloads get corrupted. Check the md5 sum of your image files if available, or if an image doesn't write successfully, delete and re-download.

Working with Bootable SD Cards

Nook Color Dual Boot Guide

2011-10-03T19:48:00.044-04:00

MAJOR UPDATE 2/22/12: While the process hasn't changed too much, the key files have all been replaced for greater flexibility, and they are NOT compatible with the old method using rookie1's prep-dualboot zip. For an update path from earlier versions of this guide or resources related to the earlier version, see the XDA thread.

This guide details how to repartition your internal storage and install two operating systems, or ROMs, side by side. If you want CM7/9 on SD without changing your stock install, you're in the wrong place: CM7 SD Install Guide. Previous versions of this guide only worked with CM7/9 on the primary partition set and stock on the alternate partition set, and there was no way to backup or easily update the alternate install. Now, you can have either system on either partition, or have CM7 on one partition and CM9 on the other, or two side-by-side stock installs. You can also move the alternate system back to primary to back up or update. I would call this process an intermediate or advanced mod, and would not recommend trying to follow these steps if you don't understand what you're doing.

This guide takes advantage of the multiboot functionality built-in to CM7.1 nightlies since about #140. As such, it is not compatible with CM7.0.x builds or with earlier boot menus.

What you'll get: Whatever two ROMs you install, each will have a 2GB /data partition for apps and they will share a 2GB /media partition for storage, and both will have access to the SD card for more storage. At startup you will see a small green bar labeled "CyanogenMod." You have a few options when this bar appears:

Do nothing, and your primary system will boot
Hold down both volume buttons, and your alternate system will boot
Hold down 'n' for a more detailed boot menu
Hold 'n'+power and recovery will boot (if you installed CWM internally)

All of these actions must be taken in the first few seconds, before any message appears below the green bar. Once you see a confirmation message, you can release all buttons.

DISCLAIMER: As usual, YOU are responsible for changes YOU make to YOUR device. If you're uncomfortable using ClockworkMod Recovery, turn back now. If you're not sure how your NC is currently partitioned, turn back now. If you want to preserve your warranty, turn back now. Here be serpents; be so warned.

Following the guide as-is with all default options gets you a stock 1.4.1 install on secondary and a CM7 install on primary. I hope you can figure out what to substitute where for different results.

Questions or difficulties should be directed to the thread on xda-developers.com.

Prerequisites:

1GB /data, 5GB /media partitioning (not blue dot; see here)
CWM on either SD or internal recovery
Wi-Fi access

Materials:

repartitionDual2GBdata
BNpri2alt
reformatData
1.4.1-keep-CWM update .zip (IF you're not starting with an up-to-date stock install)
CM7.1+ OR MiRaGe's CM7.2 OR unofficial CM9 nightlies(w/ compatible gapps)
gapps (follow link; scroll to bottom)

Steps:

Put all materials in your SD card's root directory.
Boot into CWM.
From CWM main menu, "backup and restore" and "backup."
From CWM main menu, "install zip from sdcard," and "choose zip from sdcard."
Choose the repartitionDual2GB file.
Reboot recovery. If you have internal CWM and no boot menu, you may need to use the rhythm method:
hold nook N key and then press and hold power until the {first} message appears and then disappears with screen going blank. Release power button, then press it again and hold for ~5 seconds, the {first} message should be on the screen for three seconds or so before you release power button, keep holding N button until screen blanks again. If the screen went off while you were holding the power key, that means you were holding it for too long
Repeat step 4 and choose reformatData.
If your backup in step 3 was stock, you can "backup and restore" then "restore" and skip to step 13.
Otherwise, repeat step 4 and choose 1.4.1-keep-CWM.
When it finishes, hold the power button to shut down, remove your CWM card (if applicable), and power back on.
Complete B&N registration process¹
Power off and boot back into CWM (may require rhythm method above).
Repeat step 4 and choose BNpri2alt.
From CWM main menu, in "mounts and storage," format system, data and cache.
From CWM main menu, choose "Advanced" and "Wipe dalvik cache."
Repeat step 4 and choose CM7/9 update zip.²
Reboot into main partition and set up Wi-Fi.
Reboot into alt partition (hit both volume buttons at once on "CyanogenMod" loading screen) to make sure it's working.
optional: install gapps, keysmod, etc from CWM.

¹Any mods you want to make to stock, do it now: update to a newer version, root with Manual Nooter (if rooting 1.4.1, follow the linked instructions but use MN 5.12.20), flash keysmod, overclock kernels, or any other CWM-flashable mods.

²If you backed up an existing CM7/9 install in step 3, then after step 16 just install gapps, install keysmod if you want it, then from CWM's main menu, Backup & restore > Advanced Restore, and restore data only from your most recent backup. When you boot into CM7 (not tested with Phiremod), it will be just like you left it.³

³Steps 17 and 18 may look unnecessary, but several users experienced force closes in their CM7 installs when they didn't take these steps.

Other Resources:

CMpri2alt: Moves a CyanogenMod install from the primary partition set to the alternate partition set
BNalt2pri: Moves a stock install from the alternate partition set to the primary partition set
CMalt2pri: Moves a CyanogenMod install from the alternate partition set to the primary partition set
Revert dual boot: deletes the alternate partition set and alternate boot files. Does not restore stock partition sizes, but must be run prior to partitioning back to stock
1.4.1 full restore: removes CWM from internal recovery, does not affect partitioning
1.4.1-to-alt-partition: updates any existing stock install on the dual boot partition (removes root, does not remove installed apps)
Steps to back up and/or update both partitions
Instructions to rename boot files created with j4mm3r's multiboot
Possible fix for boot-loop at 'n' screen on stock partition (largely untested: don't use it unless you have this problem)

Credits:

repartitionDual2GB and reformatData provided by DeanGibson
1.4.1 zips provided by rajendra82
BNpri2alt, BNalt2pri, CMpri2alt and CMalt2pri are minor alterations of DeanGibson's files linked above
revert-dualboot is a minor alteration of rookie1's remove-dualboot
Racks11479 provided key info for the above alterations

Originally posted on xda-developers.com

Your Nook Color Options: Root & ROMs

Running CyanogenMod 7 from SD (Nook Color): Simplified Instructions

2011-09-13T05:37:00.023-04:00

This guide is just a step-by-step re-write of verygreen's Size-Agnostic SD method. For help or more information, see the original thread.

The resulting CM7 install will run entirely from the SD slot, without altering the contents of the Nook Color itself. The NC will always try to boot first from the SD slot. To load the stock, on-board operating system, hold n/home right after powering on and choose "emmc" and "normal" from the boot menu. For all intents and purposes, this arrangement preserves your warranty, because when the card is removed there is no indication that the NC was ever anything but 100% stock.*

I make no guarantees, however, regarding how this process will impact your warranty or your device. YOU are responsible for changes you make to YOUR device. /disclaimer

Some people refer to this arrangement as dual booting, though more advanced users can also install and dual boot both OSes directly from the NC.

Materials

You will need a Micro SD card 1GB or larger. Class 4 Sandisk cards 8GB and larger have provided the most consistently stable installs. Class 2 and unclassed Sandisks have also performed well, but most other cards, while allowing you to install CM7, will have performance issues. More information.
You may need a USB Micro SDHC card reader. All-in-one readers found on laptops and some PCs are often unreliable for writing a disk image. Some people have success using the NC, a phone, or a camera as a reader, but it's not recommended, and may render the card unreadable if the process is interrupted. More information.
In Windows, you will need a utility such as WinImage to write this image to your SD card. In Linux or Mac OSX use the dd command (something like: dd if=/somewhere/generic-sdcard.img of=/dev/sdX bs=1024k), being sure to write to the entire device and not a numbered partition. More detailed Mac instructions.
Download the disk image in compressed .gz format. It's an approximately 9MB file which you will extract into an approximately 130MB disk image.
You will also need a CyanogenMod 7 ROM from this list. This installer is made to work with CM 7.1 and up, not the older 7.0.x releases.
Finally, if you wish to activate a Google account for the Android Market, GMail and etc., you will need the CM7 Google Apps package, found at the bottom of this page.

Steps

Write the extracted image file to the SD card. In WinImage, the command is Restore Virtual Hard Disk Image on Physical Drive under the Disk menu. Be sure to choose the file type All Files so you can see generic-sdcard.img. It may take a few minutes.
Copy the CM7 update file (as is: do not unzip) to card.
Safely remove/eject the card from your computer, place it in your powered-off Nook Color, and power-on. The NC will unpack the CM7 ROM to the SD card, informing you of its progress, and power off when it is done. CM7 is now installed.
If you wish to install Google Apps remove the SD card and return it to your PC.
On your PC, copy gapps-*-signed.zip file (as is:do not unzip!) to the card's boot partition (the only partition Windows can now access).
Safely remove/eject the card, return it to the NC, and boot into CM7.
Set up a Wi-Fi network (important!), then hold and release the power button to bring up the power menu.
Choose Reboot>Recovery. The NC will now reboot and install Google Apps, which can happen very quickly! You should be prompted to set up a Google account when you boot back into CM7, but if not, check Settings: Accounts & Sync before assuming the package did not install.

To add books or other media to the card's storage partition, you must boot into CM7 and connect to your PC via USB, and turn on USB storage by tapping through the "USB Connected" notification on the NC.

__________________________________________________________

*The one way you could inadvertently install something on the NC itself is to open ROM Manager and "Flash ClockworkMod Recovery," which would install CWM on the NC's recovery partition. Neither ROM Manager nor CWM are necessary or useful to maintain a CM7 SD install; leave ROM Manager alone or uninstall it until and unless you are ready to replace the stock OS with CM7 on eMMC (embedded Multi Media Card, shorthand for the NC's internal flash storage).

Updating a CM7.0.x SD to CM7.1 | Your Nook Color Options: Root & ROMs

The Myth of Atheism

2011-07-25T21:22:00.001-04:00

The label "atheism" is a powerful bit of rhetoric. It allows atheists to continuously fall back on the insistence that they are making no positive claims, while forcing others into either a posture of rational proof or an admission that the failure to adopt such a posture is itself a form of atheism.

Behind this seemingly insubstantial banner, however, march row upon row of positive claims and assumptions which go entirely unexamined so long as everyone keeps feinting at the flag:

1. Materialism
2. Existential Nihilism
3. Determinism
4. Rationalism
5. Scientific Positivism

The above array of beliefs is known in the arts as Modernism, a paradigm going on four generations out of date. To sum it up, it's the assertion that we live in a strictly physical, rigidly determined universe with no purpose or meaning, and that society should be organized according to rational principles arrived at by experimentation without regard for tradition.

Literal atheism, the lack of belief in any deity, is a minor corollary of the above beliefs--minor, but rhetorically useful for selling the underlying worldview as some kind of default position or null hypothesis, rather than an outmoded belief system in and of itself.

My Nook Color F!AQ

2011-06-06T07:51:00.009-04:00

This is not a general or comprehensive FAQ so much as my personal idiosyncratic list of things that made me go "F!" while working with the NC and CyanogenMod 7, and how I got past them. Items are listed in roughly the order they were encountered.

F! Rooting, ROMs, 1.2, 2.2, 2.3.4, 3.1, GingerFroCoSammich: WTF?!?

Don't take every recommendation as gospel, but this guide is a great starting point to wrap your head around all the options: http://quinxy.com/guides/how-to-pick-your-nook-color-operating-system-and-install-options/

F! Win32DiskImager requires half a dozen development environments and still doesn't work!

Okay, it's shareware not freeware, so you may still need Win32DiskImager down the road, but WinImage is a simpler, standalone utility and it's free for 30 days--and get this, not 30 consecutive days, but 30 days on which you actually open the program. For instance, I installed about a month ago, and am currently on evaluation day four. You will probably get sick of messing with this stuff long before you run out of eval days.

F! I can't find and/or write the disk image in WinImage!

The command to write the image is Disk>Restore Virtual Hard Disk Image on Physical Drive. You will have to show file type All Files every time in order to find the .img file.

F! I don't have a card reader, and need access to the boot partition of my bootable uSD card.

The simple, smart solution to this problem is STFU and get a card reader. However, you can access the uSD card's boot partition from the NC's stock OS. Power off the NC, make sure the card is ejected, and power back on. Before the OS has fully loaded, for instance on one of the splash screens, re-insert the card. Once the stock OS has loaded, it will now recognize the boot partition as storage. Inserting the uSD after the OS has loaded only gets me a "SD is ready to remove" message.

F! Why isn't my NC showing up in Windows when I plug in USB?

CyanogenMod does not automatically mount storage when you plug in USB. Open your notifications, tap the USB notification, and it will take you to the USB screen where there is a big "Turn on USB storage" button. Push it.

F! Chunks are falling off of my USB cable!

Maybe it affects some cables more than others, but the plastic around the light-up "n" on the USB cable is very brittle. B&N is aware, and will not give you a hard time about replacing the cable at no cost if you just call up customer service.

F! Where is the serial number on this thing?

The SN is under the movable flap that conceals the uSD slot.

F! I want to revert this bootable uSD to simple storage, but it won't format!

Some people have reported success just formatting the card, but it was no good for me. The simplest solution for me after trial and error was to use the graphical 'slider' interface in EASEUS Partition Master (free) to delete all partitions except the storage partition and then drag the ends of that partition to take up the unallocated space.

F! The sound is terrible. Like, terrible terrible.

It kind of just is :( Maybe some NCs are worse than others, but tons of people report ridiculously low volume through both the speaker and the headphone jack, as well as some cases of hissing or other artifacts over headphones, particularly high-end audiophile headsets. The situation can be aided considerably on CM7 by installing the Nook Tweaks app from the marketplace and adjusting speaker and headphone gain there.

Your Nook Color Options: Root & ROMs

My Nook Color Android Odyssey (Gadget Lust Consummated)

2011-05-07T06:04:00.012-04:00

UPDATE 12/13/11: This post is about my thought processes and experiences, but is a bit outdated as any kind of guide. I've prepared more up-to-date and step-by-step materials for those seeking help, starting here: Your Nook Color Options: Root & ROMs END UPDATE

Motivated partly by the death of my old iPod and partly by the temptation of Amazon's $114 ad-supported Kindle, I started poking around the internet last month looking to fill the big ol' gap in my e-cology between my phone and my PC. It's the first time since my MSI Wind was stolen last summer that I've had the discretionary funds to even consider doing so.

My experience with the netbook had really sold me on e-books, despite it being a less than ideal device for reading them. I considered going that route again, but a netbook wouldn't be much of a portable music solution, and I didn't have the money for a new one, anyway, which would leave me with all the uncertainties of buying used electronics via craigslist or ebay. With ebooks in mind, I wandered over tohttp://www.mobileread.com/forums/ which is probably where the idea of the Barnes & Noble Nook Color(NC hereafter) got planted in my mind. It was more money than I wanted to spend, but the more I looked at it, the more it started to look like the best value. Out-of-the-box, it's not much more than an e-reader. Yes, it has particularly good tools for children's books and magazines, and it does have an on-board browser, mv4 video player, and, as of recently, a limited Android apps market. The real value, though, is that it has the hardware to do A LOT more, a modding community taking advantage of that hardware, and a nigh-unbrickable configuration.

I gave in to temptation about two days after they started carrying the NC at Staples, down the street. I had to hit the road immediately after, and so was limited to the stock operating system (then based on Android 2.1, recently upgraded to 2.2) for a few days. It was even more underwhelming than anticipated, given the capabilities I knew were hiding in this machine. Barnes & Noble's customizations of the Android OS seemed to consist entirely of limiting and removing functionality. I can't criticize them too much, because they did make the NC ridiculously open to experimentation and modification (see below), and my little cousins were pretty impressed with the sample kids' book.

Upgrading to Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread--Root, Shmoot

A lot of people opt to root or jailbreak their Apple and Android devices, which is a possibility with the NC, as well. Rooting is not a radical change to the device; it amounts to granting yourself Administrator (in Android terms, Super-user) privileges to change settings such as those preventing you from accessing a competitor's store or loading unauthorized apps. It will void your warranty if discovered, and like Administrator access to a PC, it gets you under the hood where you can really screw things up. You can also run into problems when the manufacturer or service provider releases an over-the-air update, which may just remove your Super-user access, may force a factory reset erasing all your data, or in some cases may brick your device. For some devices, though, rooting is your only option to gain access to apps that Apple or Verizon decided you can't have.

With the NC, there are a lot of options. Like, a lot.

This blog post helped me sort through them:

http://quinxy.com/guides/how-to-pick-your-nook-color-operating-system-and-install-options/

Given that I shelled out more than was wise at the time for the NC itself, I didn't have the resources to do some of these things that involved multiple MicroSD cards and/or a card reader for my PC. I determined pretty quickly that I was more interested in running a more current and complete version of Android, rather than rooting Barnes & Noble's build. Because the NC boots first from the MicroSD drive, much like PCs are designed to boot first from a floppy or CD drive, it's possible to place an entire operating system on a MicroSD card, without altering the stock OS at all, which seemed like a good place to start. The information in this forum thread, http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1005633 pointed me to an inexpensive card known to perform well--some cards, particularly the most expensive "class 10" cards, make terrible boot drives.

I used the instructions in this thread, http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1000957 with some help from the "For Dummies" version (with videos!) in this blog post, http://www.anamardoll.com/2011/04/ereader-running-cm7-firmware-on-nook.html to install the latest stable build of CyanogenMod to the card. Often simply called CM7, it's a volunteer-built version of Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread) optimized for various devices.

The blog post has a rather lengthy introduction, so I skipped down to "what you'll need," and only watched the 2nd and part of the 3rd video, using verygreen's steps (from the forum thread) from there.

The only place I ran into trouble was getting google apps installed, which is how you enable the market, and would normally be accomplished with an external card reader. How I got around it is detailed in this thread: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1526550

And now my little reader is quite a capable Android Tablet. With a little more tweaking, I could overclock the CPU and/or install other versions of Android, like the less stable (but still fairly stable) version of Android 3.0 (Honeycomb). As is, I see very rare lag in any app, and run live wallpaper and multiple widgets from my home screen with no trouble. All I have to do to access the stock OS is shut the NC down, pop out the SD card, and turn it back on.

Do You Pee Like a Fat Chick? [NSFW] [TMI] [YMMV]

2011-05-06T23:00:00.000-04:00

This post is intended only for the betterment of humanity. No offense is meant toward any parties. Do not read while eating.

I've shared space with two individuals, both somewhat obese, one male and one female, who left identical, tenacious, hidden messes when they would pee sitting down. I can only assume that they are not aware of the calling card they leave, and hence others also roam oblivious to the revulsion they inflict upon guests and housemates.

The mess in question, as some more astute readers may already have surmised, is a considerable quantity of urine clinging to the underside of the toilet seat. My working theory is that these deposits result from the urethra being oriented along an excessively forward trajectory, likely due to sitting atop considerable excess tissue. It's understandable that the mess goes unseen, but also quite problematic: the dangling drops persist for a surprisingly long time in their shady grotto, potentially growing rancid but certainly lurking for as long as it takes for the next person to come along.

So please, if you suspect you may pee like a fat chick, take some corrective steps. If you cannot achieve a more downward orientation of the urethra, at least clean up after yourself.

Shyamalan

2011-03-25T07:09:00.001-04:00

Pretty much the only film of his I'll give credit as a finished work that accomplished what it promised/intended is The Sixth Sense. Unbreakable minus the last five minutes could have been pretty good, but it was the beginning of a long series of let-downs. His other films are a mish-mash of disparate memes that never get properly tied together and none of which are fully realized, with increasingly lackluster twists and, it would seem, deliberately stilted acting.

As a disclaimer, I haven't seen anything since The Village, but from all I've heard it's been downhill from there.

How I hardwired my iPod dock

2011-01-31T05:30:00.013-05:00

My first vaguely servicey blog post! Note that it's titled "How I hardwired my iPod dock," not "How to..." I'm not liable for injury or property damage, don't try this at home, and be careful with electricity; it's like super-fire. Consider yourselves disclaimed.

The item in question is an obsolete, el cheapo Memorex iTrek, of which the manufacturer disavows all knowledge and no schematics are to be found. It operated one (1) time on battery power, after which the wall plug was the only option. Eventually, through a combination of flimsiness and careless treatment, the prong that jacks the power cord into the unit snapped off inside the device. I've never seen a jack-prong quite like this one: about 2mm diameter, mostly hollow, and about as sturdy as aluminum foil. The iTrek got shoved in its case and stuffed in the closet for a year and a half.

Last week, I was in project mode and dug it out. Step one, I stared at the thing until I found screw holes, and unscrewed until I was 78% sure I had them all. I then took my largest flathead screwdriver and started prying the two halves of the plastic casing apart, all the way around the edges. When prying open small electronics for which you have no guide or schematics, it's best to assume you will break it at this step. Miraculously, I did not (well, not badly).

Don't mind the arrows and squiggly lines for now, but laid open, it looked something like this:

Sorry for the crappy phone pics.

The circuit board with the power jack stands upright toward the left, with the jack itself between the white line's positive end and the red arrow's negative. I removed the board's securing screw and unseated it (without breaking any wire connections) to get a better look. The best solution for most devices, even laptops, is to find the jack's solder marks on the bottom of the circuit board, figure out which is negative and which positive, and solder the respective wire ends from your power cord directly on top. I don't have a solder gun, nor a budget for power tools, presently, so I needed another option.

I got a half-assed idea about using the contacts on the doors to the battery compartment, which led me to what I should have done first: mapping the power circuit. The white line in the above photo is traced over the black wire which connects the right-hand battery compartment to the positive end of the power jack. What you can't really see, jutting off the other side, is a trapezoid of thin, bent metal, split into two tines at the end: the contact where power feeds from the left-hand battery compartment to the negative end of the DC jack.

Armed with this information, the solution became obvious:

Now, this is a power cord; it's going to get tugged on at some point, and a solderless splice would pull apart pretty quickly under pressure. Fortunately, my eighth grade shop teacher bestowed upon me knowledge of the underwriter's knot, which acts as a shock-absorber to prevent power cords pulling loose from their contacts.

credit unavailable, c/o Google images

So, once I had a gameplan, my steps were:

1. drill a new hole for the cord in back casing

2. with a utility knife, cut the remains of the jack-in off the cord

3. split apart the cord for a length of 3" to 5" and strip the insulation from the last 1"

4. thread the cord through the new hole in the back casing

5. tie the underwriter's knot inside the casing

6. cut the wire I traced in white, strip the end, and splice with the negative power wire*

7. with needle-nose pliers, straighten out the metal contact and pull apart the tines, careful not to pull it off the circuit board

8. coil the positive wire around one tine, then cross the two tines over each other and twist them together**

9. insulate both splices with decent electrical tape or heat-shrink tubing

10. reseat the circuit board, repositioning wires as needed, and so:

*I used a Western Union Splice:

credit unavailable, c/o Google images

**I held the end near the circuit board steady with my needle-nose and twisted with regular pliers

So that was my extremely half-assed methodology. Maybe it will be of some use planning your own half-assery, though I wouldn't recommend it.

Solstice come soon

2009-12-04T20:16:00.002-05:00

I have nothing to say, but wish to say it anyway. No future presents itself. My faculties are very likely in a state of decay. I would like nothing more than to lead my people out of the desert, but in truth I'm rather comfortable here, and find the scorpions friendly. The seasonal dark beckons.

today's haiku

2009-09-03T18:17:00.000-04:00

Each morning more stars
greet me but daybreak beats me
on the crosstown train.

Colored pencil biker bar

2009-08-07T22:37:00.002-04:00

A few weeks ago I was back in my hometown for a family party, and the night before the main event I went out to the bar with my mom and my uncle. I usually run into family friends there, sometimes people I haven't seen for years, but it's rare I see old friends from school, as most of us scattered all over the country after graduation.

So I'm sitting at the bar talking to my uncle and listening to the band, and a pack of bikers come in--not that unusual, as it's a bit of a biker bar. I look them over, vaguely recognize the club name on their jackets, scan them as friendlies and return to my conversation. As soon as they've settled in, the youngest guy in the pack makes a bee-line for me and sticks his hand out, "How you doing, old man?"

Turns out it's my best friend from when we were ten. At the time I was clueless--my mother had actually pointed out someone we passed on the street earlier and said, "You know who that is? That's [Johnny Bluejeans]," about someone who looked completely different, so the last thing I expected was [Johnny Bluejeans] standing before me. Despite attending a small school in a small town, I'd hardly seen the guy since we were little kids, on account of a falling out in the fifth grade. There were a couple of things that lead up to it, all of them adding up to him deciding he wanted to hang out with the 'tough' kids while I was shaping up to be one of the 'smart' kids.

The end of it was when he and another kid, both kept in from recess and left unattended in the classroom, decided to gather items from everyone's desks and hide them in mine. We all come in from recess, and people are telling the teacher for the next hour or two, "I'm missing x y and z." The girl next to me is missing a box of colored pencils. When I eventually have to reach into my desk for something, things don't feel right in there, so I latch onto an unfamiliar object and pull it out: colored pencils. Darling cherub that I am, I turn to the girl and ask, "Are these your colored pencils?" She looks at the box, gives me a scowl, says "Yes!" and snatches it out of my hand, heading for the teacher.

What followed was an inquisition made only marginally more bearable by the fact that the teacher liked me and I was the last one she'd suspect. The whole episode was scarring--I was already The Poor Kid, and now I was The Poor Kid Who Steals. It was the following year that [Johnny] fessed up; we'd already mostly stopped hanging out, but from then on he was dead to me.

So anyway, random encounter in the bar: we didn't have a lot to say to each other, but we basically made peace. That's one less karmic loose-end. Ironically, the guy my mom misidentified as [Johnny] turns out to be someone I still occasionally feel guilty about screwing over when I was seven :P

Morning Song (for banjo accompaniment)

2009-03-13T10:55:00.003-04:00

Hop on down and butter my scone
I'll eat that shit at the break of dawn
Pour some coffee in my face
Ready to win this human race

hyrk djur dyit dyit myong djitty jong (lengthy banjo solo)

*Don't fawn over my genius, simply revel in it

Religious Right: neither religious, nor right; discuss

2009-03-02T09:26:00.004-05:00

I've been on an arguing-on-the-intarwebs kick lately, and happened to express my thoughts on the politicized evangelical movement pretty well. This passage came from an abortion debate on the Plain Dealer's letters site:

This rhetoric so often employed by the Christian Right, dripping with fear and loathing, continually rides the line on both permissible limits and the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. You may not be shouting fire, but you do everything in your power to keep the theater crowded and insistently whisper, "fire!" from the wings. On a range of issues, the political leadership does everything in their power to keep the faithful in fear of everyone who does not share their values: those who condone homosexuality are out to "destroy marriage;" those who don't practice abstinence-until-marriage and take measures appropriate to their lifestyle are "killing babies;" those who promote an inclusive society have declared "war on Christmas." You probably know the litany better than I do. Christians are encouraged to take actions to curtail their fellow citizens' "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" in matters that have no bearing on their own.

And often enough, it leads to violence. You don't see the lunatic fringe, inspired by Keith Olberman or Ted Kennedy, shooting up white, conservative mega-churches. No one is fire-bombing the Heritage Foundation or evangelical re-education camps for homosexuals, or gunning down clergy who marry fathers to their daughters at a "purity ceremony," as much as the procedure strikes many of us as child endangerment (and just plain creepy). I wouldn't go so far as to say the rhetoric on the Right encourages violence, most of the time, but it routinely toes the line without crossing, keeping the constituents riled just short of a lynching.

You can cry "hypocrite" when we denounce your speech if you like, but we do so because that speech is irresponsible and dangerous. Many see a clearer hypocrisy in those who claim the moral high ground and then wage their campaigns without ethics or decency, with more concern that their arguments be plausible than true. Abortion, gay marriage, proper science education and the like pose no threat to your well-being or way of life, only your political dominance.

and now for something completely different

2009-02-27T11:45:00.002-05:00

I came by the blog today to see if I should scrap any particular posts or the whole shebang, but reading over everything I found nothing too terribly incriminating or embarrassing, just a lot of human chatter from the inside of a common enough sort of head.

An awful lot of posts mention or show evidence of excessive drinking; much to my own surprise, I've given it up. Perhaps a future post will explore just how it happened, but for the time being I'm eschewing all intoxicants but coffee and fiction.

Otherwise, my situation is much unchanged. I feel a little better about work, mostly by contrast with the hardship of others in our ailing economy. My wage is no less paltry, but it's as steady as ever and buys a bit more. I've grown, if anything, less frugal, working myself into a tizzy over assorted gadgetry until I SUBMIT to some unnecessary but fascinating device.

My birthday month is winding up, and it's been one of the better ones, with a lovely confluence of friends returning and opportunities emerging without the tired contrivance of planning. Among other things, this year marked the first in memory that my birthday featured abundant sunlight and shirtsleeve weather outdoors.

I'm even giving some thought to writing, of the sort that results in a finished work with themes and narrative, though I treat the proposition circumspectly, given my record (something like 6-to-1 on projects begun vs. finished). I'm woefully out of practice and accustomed to abbreviating my thoughts for digestion on the internet, so it will take some work to get back in shape, but I've nothing better to do but argue philosophy with anonymous children and play mob games on Facebook, so what the hell?

At any rate, blogging being fair practice, I may keep the Flavors coming for a bit.

Release

2008-02-21T18:52:00.001-05:00

Thirty gallons of dirty fuel-oil killed his furnace
before we arrived; we stayed three years,
my mother and I, everything breaking and nothing fixed.

Twelve is old enough to tend a trash-fire, he said; I found
a coffee can and a use for soiled fuel.
Often as not, a poorly timed release left me stomping

infant grassfires. When summer passed, he dragged
in a wood-burning stove, knocked out
a pane for the pipe. We had a black rod to stir the fire.

Cast iron, four feet long and heavy; this is what I did not use
to kill him. He was sober, I think, my mother’s
feet in his lap. She was sleeping. He was trying

to connect, saying all the things he thought
a boy or man my age must think. His expression
was idiot mean, like I had only seen on children.

I would not respond, and he turned on her, tickling
a foot—not playful but mean, desperate. My mother
startled, woke the only way she could,

body-first and flailing. One blind hand
connected and he hollered. He punched her. One. Two.
Three times, stood, lifted, dropped her. Stooped, and threw her

to the couch again. He backed off, red
with bull-nostrils. I was close: two steps a batting stance—
would it be over? I half stood, hovered. He didn’t know,

or took his chances. I knew clearly then that he would
kill us, sometime. He would feel okay,
find reasons why he’d had to do it. Right now, blood settling,

he was deciding why it was her fault. I remembered
the conversation that night, his look
like a beaten child past crying. Crouched, reaching,

I had no idea suddenly what was killing,
dying. What would live?

2007-11-30T19:35:00.000-05:00

I'm a complete mystery to myself. Not only have I not found my self, but I don't believe it exists. My behaviors don't add up to anything. Probing inward turns up nothing persistent--twists of guilt, eddies of outrage, scuds of sadness. I resist and turn away and hide from myself like I used to see adults doing when I was a kid and wondered what could be so terrible, but then I catch myself at it and relax and open up to myself and there's nothing there but a blank light which I guess is a kind of love.

But I'm not comfortable with it. I tie myself in knots only to occasionally notice I'm doing it and let all the knots go spang!into love and light. I'm afraid of living in that state of openness because I'll stop working and feeding myself and lose all my stuff, so I binge on stress and striving for a bit and then vomit it all out and rest in the light, then rinse, repeat. It's insane. I'm doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, or just hoping for them, anyway. And then there's this base level of satisfaction, where just living is such a fun ride no matter how much I'm sucking at it. There's this joyous apathy that more or less rules out achievement, and why trade that for scratching and clawing my way to the--middle, most likely, at best. At the same time, why devote so much time and money to elaborate distractions (or simple, bottled distractions, for that matter)

?

Round and round, and I'm not nearly sick of it.

Dream a Golden Cowboy 5/20/05

2007-10-21T17:32:00.000-04:00

Drifting to sleep, I decided I would have a lucid dream. More, I decided what I would do: ask questions of my dream characters, rather than the usual fornication or magic tricks. My first REM cycle came around, and I was wandering around looking for a place to sleep, feeling tense and lost, when I realized, “Wait, it’s okay, I’m not really here; I’m at home in bed.” I was immediately relieved and happy, and the world became more concrete and vivid, with gorgeous claymation clouds in the sky. I continued walking, the tree-lined neighborhood threading out toward country fields, then decided to fly, just rising up a bit off the ground and whisking along.

As I wooshed briskly over the surface of the road, I saw someone walking alongside an overpass/bridge. I remembered my goal and circled back to talk to him. He was a man in his 40s, balding and a bit weather-beaten, wearing something like jeans, flannel, and quilted vest–outdoors stuff. We stood beside the road under the overpass, leaning on a railing and looking across a smallish creek at some old tombstones, like an unkempt little family graveyard. I don’t remember what I said to this man, but It occurred to me (this was unique for me–inner monologue and speech were clearly separated in this dream) that I often see graveyards in my dreamsthat doesn't sound accurate, but it's possible>.

At this point someone walked behind us and said, “It’s a con.” He said something else that I didn’t hear well, but I took it to be something like, “This is where it’s at.” Leaving the other fellow, I asked the new man, “Why is it a con? Are you saying that the streets are what’s sacred, consecrated by human activity?” He replied, “Well, you and me here helping each other out, anyway,” grinning somewhat beatifically. It had occurred to me that either of these men might be my dream guide, but I don’t really believe in the idea, and I didn’t ask. All I’m sure of about this man’s appearance to start is that he had long, dirty-blond hair, but as he stepped back and turned to go, he was wearing a golden-colored cowboy outfit, complete w/ hat. I said, with some amusement, “Goodbye golden cowboy,” then more sincerely, “Thanks.” He grinned and tipped his hat, then walked away.

The dreamworld lost vividness and motion, becoming gray and still, and I knew I could open my eyes and be awake, which I did.

?

2007-10-12T20:34:00.001-04:00

Who was that guy?

Grasping at identity

2007-10-12T20:22:00.000-04:00

It's very hard to write without grasping at identity, assuming a voice. For that matter, it's hard to speak without making every effort to be somebody. I I I. No one persists, yet multitudes arise. Habits, hardly those one wants to own, sit up and stare at you. Being one is not an adequate solution. There are strains worth preserving, though they make themselves known mainly in the absence of what they ward. An absence warrants no edifice. Wherein one abides, or not. One.

What makes a man? A man and a woman, making. A man or a woman.

A man
Wo man
A man
Wo man
Hu man
Nu man

Where in one.

Lost Love + Broken Dreams

2007-10-02T23:04:00.000-04:00

I just watched Mulholland Drive.

agin

2007-09-29T22:43:00.000-04:00

There's something I want to express, but just can't seem to get at. It has to do with ego-making, the whole process of examining "who I am." Today I was thrown into self-examination by an article about a serial killer (or rather, a serial rapist executed for the crimes of a serial killer who may still be at large). It got me sifting my present circumstances and past influences for just what keeps me sane, and I suppose that sane-maker is what I want to express. I'll call it The Perfectly Bearable Lightness of Being. It has to do with accepting inevitable loss and treasuring the love that effervesces continuously from this morass of decaying beings. I am the gaze that goes out and the image that returns, reflection and continuity.

I don't know why I ache to say it, ag'in and ag'in and ag'in.

Twi

2007-09-29T16:14:00.000-04:00

Autumn is the twilight season, the falling away. Moments also have their seasons, and I begin to rest upon the twilight of each moment, prelude to the white crash.

Moony Goondogs

2007-09-25T21:20:00.000-04:00

So a period of intense self-doubt and examination is giving way to a sense of unreality. The people I know are like the films I watch and the books I read, or the games I play. All these worlds are The World: dreams like life like dreams. It remains unconvinced of my existence.

Sense is not my priority. Strong feelings are present without objects, or subject. Feelings only, and thoughts inseparable. A point of refraction and reflection; dimpled chrome. Narrative and characters, themes are fiction all, created even if they grip and moan, writhe out the shape of you. Revisit all the genitals of the earth to be born born again. A kingdom of flowering mushroom vulvae thrusts itself upon us, for we spin out of it copulating wildly with all around us.

Invent all your friends to be you.

And the Kitchen Sync

2007-06-12T14:17:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I made up the word 'numata' off the top of my head and Googled it. Turns out it's a city in Japan, but the top hit was a dharma translation site with this message of the day:

Things do not just come and go.

The Call of the Wild in Postmodern Man

2007-03-18T17:27:00.000-04:00

I just watched Grizzly Man, and identified easily with Timothy Treadwell. A lot of people just don't function that well in the great machine of civilization, yet it's all but inescapable. I don't think he was doing any great service to the bears, and perhaps he was habituating them too much to humans, but that was one hell of a life.

I have my own crazy idea of walking across the country collecting local stories in small towns.

Novel excerpt

2007-03-04T16:27:00.000-05:00

In the afternoon, Faen sits on the deck watching the light change as intricately shaded, solid-looking clouds roll past the sun. Every so often he picks up his flute and strings half a dozen notes together.

The deck of Harmon’s Inn affords a view down most of the Reach, blocked here and there by houses, and amid the workers coming home, he sees a lot of activity down the Reach and to the north. From the gathering crowd down the mountain, a low, flat note claps out over Gunnan: a funeral gong. The massing people stretch out in a line and make their way through the streets, gong-bearer and striker in front, then two litters, each borne by six men. As the procession draws nearer, Faengun can see that Tud’s and Fay’s fathers are among the bearers, as is Fay’s brother. Behind the litters walk the mothers, aunts, uncles, cousins and close friends, all leaning on each other, followed by a line of Gunna walking four and five abreast with bowed heads. As they move up the mountain on the main road, buildings block Faen’s view, but the sounds reach him. Between claps of the gong, he hears both wailing and softer, steady sobbing mingling with the muffled crowd noise.

Two men come out of the Inn, having come after work for a beer, and listening to the sound of the gong and the crowd, they step down into the street and head toward the main road. Faen listens a moment more, then sheaths his flute, slips it over his shoulder, and follows.
Reaching the main road, he joins the tail of the procession as it turns south on the road running parallel to the city wall. As they move along, a head or two peers down from the wall, and a few curses rise to meet them from some of the Reachfolk. Looking up from his burden, Fay’s father stumbles and halts, pausing the procession.

“Murderers!” he shouts at the Cityfolk on the wall, his voice breaking on the last syllable, and again, even more raggedly, “Murderers.”

A rock flies from the crowd, causing the heads on the wall to pull back. Farther along the wall, a man holding a rifle makes himself very visible. A murmur moves through the crowd, and they all stand quite still. Faen sees someone bending for another rock, then the gong sounds and they’re all moving again, and no one throws any more rocks or shouts any more curses, but a new note of anger emerges from the chorus of grief.

They march along the wall to the river Fee, the same river that plunges down the mountain feeding the hydroelectric plant that provides power to the Inner City and a few spots in the Reach, such as Harmon’s Inn. They cross the long stone bridge there, then turn west along the river. In the distance, the gong is answered by a deep bass horn blast and, as they draw nearer, the slow, uneven rhythm of several drums. They reach a low, rocky hill overlooking the river, and climb up, the gong, horns, and drums now joining in a jarring, otherworldly rhythm, seemingly arhythmic, yet consistently repeating and bringing the mourners under its influence.

The gong-bearer and striker continue up the hill and take a place in the center of a line of six drummers, flanked by two long, curving horns. The litter bearers move to either side of the gong and continue to the top of the hill, where a crosshatching of dry wood and kindling is piled almost to a man’s height. They lay their shrouded burdens side by side atop the bier, then file to the irregular rhythm of the funeral song back down the mountain, taking a place in the front row of mourners fanned out along the hillside. Behind the family and close friends stand half a dozen young men who were already there when the procession arrived: the pyre-builders, Linthun Nowel among them.

The musicians continue as people find their places, and from around the hill a group of monks arrive from the monastery outside of town and seat themselves on the ground to one side, so they are facing both the crowd and the pyre. As the musicians lay aside their instruments and join the mourners, the monks begin a chant that is generally believed to guide the dead into a peaceful state from which they can begin their next life, though Master Ennil once told Faengun that the chant’s main purpose is “to convince the living to release the dead.”

Guidance Durra takes a place near the top of the hill, facing the crowd of Gunna. She wears an unadorned, ankle-length gown of soft yellow with a deep red and an orange stole draped down the front, standing out from both the monks and the Reachmen. Guidance is the name given to those who have trained with the monks and undertaken a study of human history and ethics, returning to the community to aid the laypeople, offer advice, and officiate over difficult or momentous occasions such as the one at hand. Faengun attends her Guidance Hall adresses every few months, when the mood strikes him. Unlike some Guidances in Gunnan, she never levels veiled threats or open condemnations at his mother’s vocation, or his own origins.

She begins with a reflection on the Chopals’ lives. “I never thought,” she says in the midst of it, “when I saw these two wed, that I would see them move on so soon. They pass untimely from our lives, and as always when we lose those we love so young, it stirs our passions.
“Remember in this troubled time your love for Fay and Tud. Don’t deny the pain of their passing, nor seek to stamp it out through destructive acts. Conquerors inherit only rubble, and avengers snuff out nothing but their own hearts. I offer to Tud and Fay Chopal a remembrance of their lives, rather than their deaths.”

Guidance Durra returns to the crowd, and Fay’s father takes her place. Looking around, Faengun sees that the crowd has swollen with mine workers and other Gunna. He guesses there must be at least a thousand people on the hillside, those in back getting reports from the front of the crowd.

Fay’s father stands with his head down, composing himself. His first words are lost, too quiet to make out, then he clears his throat. “I want to thank Guidance Durra for her... for her kind words,” he says, and pauses. “My daughter... my... my daughter...”
Faengun feels a tightening in his chest as the bereaved father’s eyes fill with tears and the man unravels in front of them all.

“My daughter...was taken,” he howls. “She was murdered by those...greedy...those demons. Stepping on our necks, with their guns.”

Murmurs shake the crowd, some angry, some sad, some pleading. Fay’s mother steps forward, sobbing, and leads her husband back into the crowd. Tud’s father, an older man but still quite strong, steps forward.

“Please,” he calls out, “please,” and the crowd quiets. “This time is...so hard, for all of us. I don’t want more killing, more violence in my son’s name. Some kind of justice, yes...”
A few more people speak, tugging the crowd this way and that. Linthun Nowel gets up with Fay’s brother, speaking for him. “It might be your sister strung from the next lamppost.”

Finally all who would speak have spoken, and the pyre-builders move among the family distributing torches. The musicians resume their playing, and the torches are lowered to the fuel, which ignites easily. Everyone stands watching the fire climb amid the jangling funeral music. The late afternoon sky has clouded over, leaving a backdrop of white and blue-gray for the dance of flames. The deceased are just visible atop the heap, white shrouds curling in the heat. Faengun tries to keep an eye on the bodies, but their human profile is visible for only an instant before all is obscured in a pillar of flame.

Drummers will play in shifts for as long as the fire burns, well into the evening, joined at times by other musicians, and the pyre-builders will stay on hand to see the fire through to a safe end, and clean up. The mourners now break off into groups, many sitting now in circles on the hillside, their voices rising over the beat of drums. Horns and gong are cleared away, and casks of wine brought from around the hill. Some of the mourners return home for the evening, others going to prepare a feast and return in a couple of hours.

The monks remain seated, chanting, and apart from them, at the edge of the crowd, Faengun sees Master Ennil, rarely found so close to town, chanting also, with Drayr at his side. Fifty yards along the hillside, he sees Mother Finn holding court among a half dozen Gunna, while up the hill a bit Linthun and his fellows have found the wine, and talk among themselves with cups in hand. Even Sern is here, frowning and nodding in sympathy as two vendors from the market express their woes with emphatic gestures and intense expressions. Feeling at once caught up in the event and closed out of the circles forming on every side, Faen turns back to the fire, listening to the way conversation takes its rhythm from the drums, watching the flames lick at the dimming sky. He moves up the hillside, taking a place just downhill and to one side of the drummers.

The funeral song has transformed a bit with the end of the ceremonial portion of the affair, taking on a more even, if still irregular rhythm. Faen draws his flute from it’s hempen sheath and holds it a moment, feeling the heat of the fire on his back and facing out at the crowd, watching the slow turn from grief and anger to desparate gaiety. The families are still on hand, bravely accepting condolences in a loose receiving line. They form a somber eye amidst the increasing activity on the hillside. Faengun had not attended many funerals, but he felt certain this was the largest turnout for any in his lifetime, if not in Gunnan’s history. The only thing absent is a single soul from behind the city wall: no sign of Tud’s mining supervisor or any of the businessmen who would normally make an appearance. While their presence might have been met with suspicion or outright hostility, their absence would surely be taken as a sign that they sided with the judgement that the Chopals were criminals.

Taking in the conflicts and contradictory moods swirling through the crowd like uneasy weather, Faengun lifts the flute to his lips and begins softly to play. He starts slow and low, building on top of the drummers’ rhythms with a standard accompaniment to funeral song, weaving a melody amidst the sights and sounds around him. Using the traditional tune as a base for improvisation, he explores the various moods of the assembly, taking a soothing, melancholy tone for the families, spiking into anger here and there, and a kind of blind rush for those moving from circle to circle with cup in hand, already swaying a bit. Delving back into the notes of the funeral song, he seeks the heart of it, finding not only the sorrow of parting, but also a greeting to death, and acknowledgement of death, and a turning away, back into life. As light seeps out of the day, he sees the affair as a foray into the territory of death, a movement through dusk into a wild, dark territory of night.

As in his sessions with Master Ennil, Faen doesn’t dwell on the thoughts, but translates them to music and releases them into the air, all the while tending toward a unity with his surroundings.
Coming out of a wild flight into the dark, Faen comes back to himself a bit and glances over to the six drummers, to find several of them watching him with broad grins. The nearest gives him a nod, and two of the others dive into their drumming while Faen turns to a more basic melody, and then rests the flute in his lap. A small group of bystanders nearest the musicians clap their hands, and someone whistles, though the majority of the crowd is intent on their own activities. Faen has the impression that things have evened out a bit, the crowd become more unified, and he wonders, as he often has before, how much his song has to do with it.

He had the impression that night had fallen while he played, but now the sun, close to the horizon, breaks from the clouds, bringing new light. Surveying the crowd, Faen sees that the families have gone. The monks have risen and are on their way out, and there’s no sign of Master Ennil. Faen sheaths his flute, looking back at the fire. It still burns strong, though it has banked from its initial blaze. Shouldering his flute-sheath, Faen turns to find Sern with a cup in each hand.

“Another fine tune, lad: magical. I believe I owe you a drink,” says Sern, extending a paper cup brimming purple-red with wine. The man is quite coherent and steady on his feet, but beginning to show the flush of drink. Plenty of Gunna are far ahead of him in that regard, stumbling and dancing around the drummers. People are returning from the Reach now with tables, benches and food.

Faen takes the cup and sips, pursing a bit at the sting of alcohol; he rarely indulges, and can count on one hand how many times he’s been drunk. Still, it’s fairly sweet, and he realizes he hasn’t had anything to eat or drink since leaving the inn.

He and Sern take a seat at table amidst some of the vendors Sern has met today. They greet him warmly, all but ignoring Faen; Sern obviously kept busy today. The food is plentiful and hearty, and tastes great on his empty stomach, though he’s used to better fare at the inn. When the meal is done, it’s full dark. Some of the revellers are just getting started, other musicians sitting in with the drummers, playing strings and horns or their own drums, but Faen decides to take his leave with the wave now heading back to Gunnan.

He walks with about a dozen men and women back to the bridge and along Wall Street. City guards patrol both the wall and the streets, and the more drunk among Faen’s cohort shout obscenities at them, remarking on where the City folk keep their rifles, where they should stick them, and so forth. One man drops his pants and waves his genitals at a pair of guards, one of whom steps forward aggressively but stops when his partner grips his shoulder.

Pan's Labyrinth

2007-01-31T00:52:00.000-05:00

I don't have much revealing or original to say, but it was a lovely dark fairy tale. It left me feeling incredulous about the evil humans inflict on each other, particularly in dark times when the rule of law is weak. Is the threat of punishment, loss of freedom and forfeiture of assets, all that restrains the darkest impulses of a great many? Can anyone know until thrown back fully on one's own resources?

A Scanner Darkly and Lullaby

2006-07-26T04:22:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I went to see A Scanner Darkly, and I also started reading Lullaby by Chuck Pahluniak. Just now, I finished Lullaby. The two of them got under my skin a bit, maybe partly because of tense situations in my life that also came up this week, but also because of strong parallels between the two. Both have a strong tone of paranoia, and a theme of losing one's identity, or discovering that there's no identity to lose. Actually, the parallels are so close that Pahluniak probably lifted some of the character and structure from Dick's novel. Both feature central characters who abandon the family life for an isolated existence under assumed identities, and eventually lost the new existence, too, leading to a string of rebirths that blur their identities like an over-dubbed cassette tape, all of this happening in a milieu of surveillance and threat of contagion. Both view reality as samsara, a kind of elaborate light show distracting us from what's happening underneath, which resonates with my Buddhist leanings. I'm not attributing it to more than coincidence that I encountered the two more or less simultaneously, though there are certainly times I would have passed up a Pahluniak novel without a second thought, and yesterday I bought two and went to see a movie based on a Dick novel, knowing full well the paranoid and otherwise dark strains in both bodies of work (though I think Linklater cancelled out P.K. Dick in my expectations of Scanner). What I'm taking from both is less the darkness, though, than a reinforcement of my belief that pursuing identity, pleasure, contact and so forth is fruitless, and binds me in suffering. The competing belief remains, though, that I should seek greater contact, more pleasure, and make something of myself. In a sense, the experiences of this past week (which also included tripping over dharma in several situations, and one period of extreme intoxication) have made clear these two poles I shuttle between.

The Tasting

2006-07-24T08:40:00.000-04:00

I woke up today in an entirely unfamiliar position in my familiar apartment, lying on the floor of the corner of my living room that I'd call my 'music room,' with a discarded pair of shorts for a pillow. I feel more 'still drunk' than hung over, and I'm pretty sure I left the tasting well before midnight last night (it's 8:30am now). I vaguely recall being driven home by the police from an unfamiliar neighborhood (I'd had every intention of visiting the jazz bar down the street from the tasting, but apparently I didn't make it). Upon arriving home, I recall having a great deal of trouble with the door, and even being tempted to climb up to my balcony, but I don't remember precisely what the trouble was, or how I eventually got in. For that matter, I don't explicitly recall leaving the tasting, which was supposed to be 'a stop' in the evening, and not the whole evening. I can only hope I left with some semblance of honor, though I think everyone remaining by the time I left was quite drunk as well. Quite the Dionysian revel. I must sleep more, in a bed, preferably.

2006-06-01T02:34:00.000-04:00

Below is this week's round-robin Bedtime Story from the Phoenix Spa in Second Life

MOOSE LOAM TOMORROW

Taosaur: Am I a man or a mushroom? The mycellium has tapped all my vital systems, but it's not rotting me like that ancient tree where I first saw its mottled fruit; no, I feel born again into a world with more shades of time and consciousness than the man I was could dream. My bent for exploration took me into that jungle, but I had no inkling I would one day wander realms like these.

Lee Enfield: The soft deep green of the jungle moss, the scent of the deep pungent naturalness, the small busy sounds of the tiniest of animals, and the far off ones of larger animals echoed in the new fungal senses. I had ahad no idea, of teh intensity of consciousness such held, until I was fused with the mushrooms being. I exulted, and wndered in wonder, with my body, but I also wandered in my mind and senses, all new and rich.

Raine Daligdig: At times when one's senses are altered, one notices things which, in an unaltered state, might come quickly to seem ordinary, but which, when one first notices them, are anything but. Then, all at once, I realized what about the experience was so captivating me. I recalled, in my years of half paying attention in school, that the native peoples of this area often used the local fungi in religious rituals--I had never bothered to learn. Now, I found myself wondering--was I, like the natives, embarked upon a journey both spiritual and chemical--but, unlike a young person of the tribe, doing so without guidance, alone, and with no voice with which to cry out for it?

Bunny Burrel: "If that is your only concern, my good lady," said a voice from down by my feet, rich as the soil I stood on, "then it would be an honor and a priviledge to be your guide." I looked down, of course, and there I saw, naturally enough, a catterpillar. I wondered why I had expected anything else, as he went on to introduce himself. "My name," he elucidated, "Is Benjamin Quinton Folderol, Esq. My friends call me Biscuit, however, and I would be very pleased to count you among them."

Marianne McCann: "Well Biscuit, it is nice to meet you, and I would gladly call you kin. - but I find myself out of my depth here: perhaps you can tell me where I am?" "Well, for the answer to that question, dear lady, is not one to tell. It is one to learn," said Biscuit. "But be mindful. The path ahead is a tricky one. Mind your step!"

Adri Saarinen: I thank Biscuit, that noble larvae, and hope to meet him again after his transformation. Like him, I must enter a strange, dark world and hope to emerge on the other side a new creature, and soar on gossamer wings. Leaving the caterpillar behind, I step around a tree and discover a thin, rutted path worn into the ground by run off from the torrential rains. With nothing to lose, I step upon the path and pick my way carefully around the deep ruts in the now-parched, cracking ground; whatever lies ahead, I can only face it one moment at a time.

Taosaur: What I take for the dry cracking of the earth beneath my feet grows into a great rumbling, and in the distance I see an enormous tree atop a hillside, with dozens of antlered figures grazing beneath. The scene still seems a mile off when I hear a squeal beneath my feet. The great tree in fact barely reaches my waist, its branches laden with tiny walnuts, and the thunderous umbling emanates from tiny moose, not two apples high, crushing the nuts in their jaws.

Lee Enfield: A tiny moose nuzzled my foot, trumpeting softly, but insistently that I was in danger of trampling his herd. And a voice behind me, rich with green chlorophyl from the leaves its owner ate, deep with the forest loam in which he slept spoke, "Do be so very careful! Without the moose herd, the jungle would be overrun with walnut trees, and it would become a grove and we all refugees in search of a new green home." It was Biscuit, of course, who had followed me, swift over the leaves he was so familiar with, despite his size.

Raine Daligdig: It was then, looking down into the earnest face of the moose, with biscuit's sonorous voice ringing in my head, that I understood why I had come to this place, and what the forest and the fungus were trying to tell me. For 'twas the nature of my fungal/spiritual journey to find myself here, the only human, if indeed I was still human, to look upon the minature moose forest, and it was because only I could be entrusted with knowledge of it, and serve as its protector! So Biscuit told me, though he didn't tell me in as many words; all he said to me was a single word, which I will now reveal unto you.

Bunny Burrel: The word the catterpillar said to me in the voice of loam was, "Tomorrow." And it was the same word the next day, and the day after that, as days spun out into months and into years, until I lost count of them all. And I had many adventures, with my stalwart gentleman companion named Benjamin Quinton Folderol (but Biscuit to his friends), and I saw things much more wonderous than tiny jungle meese as I protected that place. But finally the day came that Biscuit knew would come, no matter how he tried to make it always Tomorrow. Older, but perhaps no wiser, I finally told him impatiently, "Today. I want Today, Biscuit. Please... tell me what it means."

ALTERNATE ENDINGS

Bunny Burrel: "The only thing I have to teach you, my dearest, is that there are places you can only visit once... as fragile as the shimmering skin of a soap bubble. It takes only a breath to break such a thing... only a word... and you have said it." "I am sorry, my love. We will not meet again." The years ANd months and days slipped through my fingers like dust, and like that, the dream was over. The magnificent forest of loam was a sad strip of green on the edge of the lot once more, and the mushrooms were just... mushrooms. The bell that had woken me continuined its strident ringing behind me. It was time to go to class.

Raine Daligdig: And Biscuit said, "Don't you see, my dear? You are meant not to know. Tomorrow never arrives; it can never be known. It is tomorrow that allows us to be who we must be and do what we must do, because it is always unknown and always coming." I asked, "Why would you tell me this, now?" And he answered, solemnly, "because your tomorrows are done." And as he said this, I knew it to be true; I found myself, at long last, subsumed, as fungi will be, into the larger consciousness of the forest..."...not here but not gone; and in that moment I was enlightened. And enlightenment, as you will all know some day, readers, is always the happy end of the story.

Lee Enfield: Buiscuit looked at me sadly,his little caterpillar eyes a still darker green with sadness. I can no longer be your guide. It is over. I will tell you, but you must go back to the world of men, and I must find another to guard the honourable meese herd. As long as it is Tomorrow, as long as you think in and of the future, it will be well, stay as Heaven, your will for your joy. But if you think of today, what you yourself want, the transitory, all that falls to the unknown, and that cannot be. The meese herd holds the future of the world, and if you have not learned wisdom and patience, it is too much to trust to you. I hope it has brought you joy, for a brief time. And I felt a great tearing within me. In my body, in my soul, and more. And the mushroomm spores and integral molecular structures were ripped from my synapses and veins, and I blinked into a cloudy world, stumbled back to 'civilisation.' While Biscuit waited patiently and wisely for another, more patient and wise than I to guard the heart of the world for tomorrow, for always.

Taosaur: "Could I have told you to seek the meese, Jack?" Biscuit asked me. I didn't have an answer, and he didn't seem to expect one. Instead, M. Folderol curled his many segments tight, and in a span of time that seemed no span at all, he shimmered silky blue-green, a tiny pillow gem. Captivated, I found myself looking not into the crysalis, but out from it, reaching into an ubiquitous emerald haze. THis is why Biscuit kept me focused on the future; with my new fungal faculties, only a moment's contemplation of the present reality unknit the whole thing. I found myself whirling in an effervescent maelstrom of rainbow light, unraveling into it, and I never saw anything so mundane as a minute jungle moose again.

Contact, daily

2006-04-15T02:12:00.000-04:00

Why do people buy pets? Mate? Have children? There was a line in Before Sunset about how young people think that deep connection with others is unavoidable, when in fact it only happens a few times, during certain parts of your life, between which it's almost impossible. There are a few people in this world to whom I'm bonded, despite infrequent contact. When we do get together, we know each other beneath the veneer of experience, somehow.

I guess I get a lot of my basic contact needs out at work, interfacing with coworkers and the public, but still, everyone else seems so desperate for attention. So many people seem intent on filling every waking moment with human contact, or else some kind of distraction. Being drawn into intimacy with such a person is far more frightening to me than life in moderate isolation.

truth and friction

2006-04-11T06:32:00.001-04:00

Being born, human or otherwise, is confusing. How does one approach life sincerely? Many people seek order, investing themselves in systems of belief through accident and intention. Many others who don't find such a system spend their time in malaise or misdeeds. Some people seem too consumed with strategy to even conceive of sincerity as a value unto itself.

I'm mulling abstractions in search of something hard to grasp. Lately I've been presented with a kind of redux of various worldviews I've entertained or test-driven over the course of my life. I'm seeing an increased grasping after identity in a lot of current media, from cartoons and drama to news and movies, often expressed in extreme posturing and caricature which is then satired in media such as South Park, The Daily Show, or Penn & Teller's Bullshit, that are themselves another level of posturing. Then, you see people adopting many of those postures in real life. Seeing this all, and also through various social encounters, I find myself looking more deeply for what people see and believe, sifting all the postures and personas for sincerity, and trying to apply what I see to my own way of seeing and being.

Myself, I'm most often presented and tempted to adopt a Political Progressive posture, and if I fall back on talking points, they most likely come from sources like NPR, The Daily Show, or NYTimes Op-Ed. Of course, there's room for expression within any of the currently popular stereotypes/lifestyles (Conservative, Liberal, Progressive, Slacker, Hedonist, etc). My real concern is that a lot of people, particularly people of power and influence, are just playing the game. They're trying to be the best Category X they can be, both climbing the pecking order and keeping their team out ahead while having largely abandoned the notion that some actions are true, right, or good while others are deceitful, wrong, and bad: not to mention the notion of the good of all, compassion, or greater good. I tend to see this insincerity most in the {political + religious} crew(NeoCons, Religious Right), but of course they are farthest from my own viewpoint and they are under the spotlight just now. There are certainly those within Social Progressive circles as well that seem more concerned with status than progress.

I'll have to TBC this thought for now...

Inaugurrat

2006-04-03T07:34:00.000-04:00

Okay, I'm making a foray into blogging, because I have so much to say and don't spend nearly enough time on-line, he says smirking. I kept a web journal years ago, but it's lost in the mists of prebloggery. I'm a dabbler, coming and going from the web as whims and resources dictate. I was just surfing old friends' blogs and rediscovered people I hadn't thought about in years, without the nuisance of actual social contact, and I thought, "Hey, that's nice." So I'm allowing others the same privelege with me, if they like.

Breaking news is, my rhythms are amok. I'm sleeping random hours, drinking too much, spending entirely too much time watching streaming television and hanging out in Second Life, and my apartment is full of trash. The only thing keeping me in touch with diurnal time is the necessity of work. I'm having very little luck straightening all this out, but I'm hoping improvements in the weather will help.

Can't say I've been accomplishing/creating anything of note in the meantime. Looking at it written out, it looks like depression, but I'm not experiencing it as such--I feel fine, just off-schedule and out-of-order. I'm starting to feel sleepy now, for instance. It's 8am.