Tag Archives: haiku

9253 -Thurs

Lovely day today.

Lots of gypsy moth and / or tent caterpillar nests in the crooks of trees around here. Seeing birds and moths in flight through the early morning fog is something magical, if you’ll excuse the lack of a less cliched expression, dear journal. I really dislike defoliation, but watching moths and butterflies flit around makes me happy. The first date I had with BHK, we saw a luna moth in the parking lot of Mama Lucias, and we were both captivated by it. Now of course, it’s doing advertising for a sleep aid.

Believe it or not, I’m a very quiet cricket, too.

Tomorrow will be my 18 month (I just spelled it moth… on the brain) wedding anniversary. Good stuff! only 33 more of those until our 50 year mark!

Goal at the doc today was muscle relaxers or a cortisone shot, maybe an appointment with a physical therapist? I don’t want to take narcotics for this, or only in an emergency.

Results were pretty positive – found a potentially good resource for physical therapy, and a few non-dopey pain fixers. I’m going to do more research on the different drugs before taking them this weekend.

After the doc, we went to Ledo’s – BHK got a cookin’ break. Yummy, but not as good as her stuff.



Memetime –

haiku2 products

my doom patrol and
gp’s more oddball games were as
serious as war

on my lack of knee
room in some teriyaki sauce
bleeder likes my eyes

school loan interest
i guess i shouldn’t feel too
bad for a monday

that i’d made a cheese
ball and chef boyardee pizza that
was not his to make

old fiddle player
and old fiddle player and
old fiddle player



A month after the beta dropped, Linux distro Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron is officially out. Besides running GNOME 2.22 and Firefox 3 Beta 5, a big new feature is Wubi support, which’ll let Ubuntu live on the same partition as Windows and makes it easy to uninstall if you want to retreat back into Microsoft’s bosom. If you’re Li-curious, now’s a good time to try. The site’s getting hammered so torrent might be your best bet.



Is it vain wonder if people I haven’t seen in years ever think of me? Not even friends or people I knew really well… but random classmates, ex-coworkers, etc. I sometimes contemplate my effects on people long after I’ve gone. There are any number of folks who don’t know me from Adam that have caused changes in the way I think or react to things.



More random spam journals adding me – I wonder what is causing it? Is it the time of year? Same thing happened a year ago. ban_set is still my best friend when it comes to dealing with them – far more expedient than dealing with lj-abuse team. I suspect it’s a side-effect of the number of google hits the journal gets… ad folks trying to get some free hits.



Assorted doodles done recently on the palm, usually on the bus, or at the stop in the morning.

From the night we missed the scarlet pimpernel. I still think of the Daffy duck version whenever I hear the title.
I had a lot on my mind that day… supposed to represent swirling colors that remain discrete, but it looks pretty static.
A scribble made while waiting for the bus. Not jacket weather anymore, but not sweating in shirtsleeves yet, either.
From yesterday. The color doesn’t do justice to her hair’s brighness, nor does the balloon properly exhibit her boomingly loud voice.


Ah, Almost Friday.



1 year ago – Family Icon introduced, palm doodle of a crab and pollen, maryland links, concert people observed, odd spam, new AV guy, deerfield lien, awesome difference between calvert and broward counties.

2 years ago – dr who, alabam, perm press, botswana rain, open dir, dionysus, ain’t misbehavin’, letter meme

3 years ago – anarchy online, internal monologue quiet, h-words, walkabout piccies, step into history, exploding toads, brain games

4 years ago – phone off the hook, hell froze over, pina colada almond joy, saw the hippies at a Wiggles-mania, walkabout pics

5 years ago – chupacabra, dreams, geoblog

6 years ago – bro, robomop, smurf-coloring,victim’s rights amendment

7 years ago – good css, zuba pants, reds are cool, mushyGeotarget

9233 – Wednesday –

Midweek already! How’d that happen? No complaints, mind you, dear journal.

At just about noontime yesterday I used Shazam! as an expletive of surprise. Without irony, or mocking Cap’n Marvel / Gomer Pyle.

What’s happening to my brain?

I don’t know.

So I wrote a Haiku.

Shazam! I exclaimed.
I looked to my left and right.
there was no lightning.


Now, I want an animal cracker. Or better, a box of animal crackers. Higher on the food chain, the better. Except for gorillas. I’d like some gorillas.

BHK made a really yummy giant salad for supper – Chris and Larry came over, but they stuck to cheesy-toast and hot dogs. More salad for me! 😀



While throwing earworms around on Kat‘s journal, I had to dig with the cruellest barb to GPGilligan’s Island Incidental Music. I did it to myself.. now I’ve got a mix of Gilligan and Flock of Seagulls – I Ran lodged firmly in my noggin.



50 things I’ve done meme continues with #48- I…

48.’have traced my family tree a bit, here and there, and have had a great deal of footwork done for me by a Mormon cousin. It seems that I’m related to Benita Falkenhayn, also known as Baroness von Berg. I quite enjoy finding little tidbits here and there, though my father’s side has a lot of pre-1920s Bavarian aristocracy and military, most understandably didn’t make it when the Nazis came to power. I’ve got a few fun folks in there… not too many horse thieves, but a lot of men and women who married into money and power. Benita was surely one who chose a bit poorly.

A bit of history – Benita von Falkenhayn, also known as Baroness von Berg, had the distinction not only of being one of the last people to be legally beheaded by the heading axe in Germany, but also to have been the first female aristocrat to lose her head to the Nazis.


Once the lover of Polish intelligence agent Major Jerzy Sosnowski, Benita put some distance between them by marrying the Baron von Berg. However she and her husband remained on friendly terms with Sosnowski and mingled within the same social circles. Rumors of Sosnowski’s activity in espionage began to surface, although charges were unable to be proven.


In February 1935, the Nazis raided a party at which the Baroness, her husband, and Sosnowski were in attendance. Over fifty people were rushed off to jail and several were released after being cleared of charges of espionage and other crimes. Though secrecy shrouded the Nazi proceedings, it eventually became known that the Baroness von Berg, along with Sosnowski’s mistress Renate von Natzmer, were sentenced to death. On February 18, 1935 both women were taken to the block at Plotzensee Prison in Berlin and decapitated by the axe.


(The ‘heading axe’ , as it was called, was little more than a blunt, primitive chopper which crushed its way through the flesh and vertebrae of the victim as he or she, knelt over the block on which their head lay. The executioners axe did not always cut through on the first strike nor did it often hit its target accurately.)


In 1938, Adolph Hitler decreed that all future executions be done by hanging or guillotine.


Time Magazine Article (for future ref):

 

Time Magazine – Monday, Feb 25, 1935 –


There was scarcely a word in the papers. No one would mention it by telephone or letter, yet everywhere that Germans met last week, behind locked doors where no servants could hear, they talked of nothing else. What had happened to the beautiful Baroness von Berg? Would she be beheaded? Had she already been executed? Was Baron Sosnowski in jail? Had he been sent back to Poland?


For a year details of the story have been leaking out (TIME, Nov. 19). Baron George (“Yurek”) Sosnowski is an extremely handsome young Pole who served gallantly in the Austrian Army, loves women, excitement. Deeply infatuated with him was the beautiful Baroness Benita von Berg, a blonde whose first husband was Richard von Falkenhayn, son of the late great General von Falkenhayn. Berlin society knew that it was to escape the influence of Polish Baron Sosnowski that beauteous, divorced Benita married stolid Baron von Berg. Curiously, all four remained friendly, all went to the same parties. Sosnowski’s parties were enough to set Berlin gossips hissing like snakes. People not invited insisted that there were buckets of champagne, sexual orgies.


About a year ago the mother of a Frau von Natzmer, well-born German girl serving as a secretary in the Ministry of Defense, went to the Ministry to complain that her daughter was being made to work too late at night. The official whose secretary she was knew that she had done very little overtime work. He reported the matter to Nazidom’s secret police.


Last February Baron Sosnowski gave another party, officially for his latest protegee, a dancer. Berlin’s half-world knew what to expect. With glittering eyes they hurried to his apartment. This time a whole cordon of secret police were waiting at the door. Many times had the Baron Sosnowski been suspected of espionage. No charge ever stuck. He blamed his luck on a curious signet ring that he always wore. Several weeks before this last party he lost his ring pulling the Baroness von Berg’s puppy from a canal.


All the guests, over 50, were rushed to jail, many of them kept there for days without a chance to change the evening clothes that they had come in. Then the weeding out started. One of the first to be released was Baroness von Berg’s first husband, von Falkenhayn. He turned out to be a member of the secret police himself.


As iron Nazi secrecy clamped down, the Sosnowski case became a lurid legend, strictly censored in the German Press, totally baffling to correspondents until they were able to tell the U. S. Embassy that languishing in jail and possibly about to be beheaded for “treason” was an inoffensive young U. S. music student, Miss Isobel Lillian Steele. Diplomatic pressure forced Germany to disgorge Miss Steele (TIME, Jan. 7), even the secret police finally admitting that she was guilty of nothing. But the music student had been innocently acquainted with Baroness von Berg, proceeded to spill all sorts of Sosnowski facts, and is now hard at work in a Manhattan hotel dashing off Sosnowskiana for tabloids and writing a book.


In Berlin last week the Sosnowski case finally reached its grim denouement before the People’s Court. This is packed exclusively with Hitler appointees, five of them aviators. Only the Realmleader can alter its judgments, which take precedence over the German Supreme Court, kicked by Nazi New Justice into discard. Normally the People’s Court lets its sentences of death be known only after the guilty heads have been chopped. Last week by a great exception underground Berlin grapevines got out word that the Court had sentenced Baroness von Berg and Frau von Natzmer to death, had let off with life imprisonment Baron Sosnowski and two unnamed female employees of the Defense Ministry. Only one question remained, would the two doomed German women die by the Nazi ax, or by the method to which spies are traditionally privileged, a firing squad?


To find out anything whatever at Plotzensee Prison, even when correspondents arrived armed with official passes, proved almost impossible. Not until the enormous prison hearse drew up and two bodies were slid in, would anyone reconstruct what had been done in the cold, misty dawn.


“They were shot,” said officials at first, then “They were beheaded.” Accustomed to such bare-faced lies, the newshawks patiently pecked for details, finally satisfied themselves that an axing had occurred. With the backs of their heads shaved bald, the Baroness von Berg and Frau von Natzmer were led in coarse, nondescript prison garb to the blood-caked block from which so many heads now roll in the sawdust. The headsman, incongruous in his yellowish celluloid shirtfront, his old silk hat and his red-spotted tailcoat, raised the gleaming ax. Twice it swished down to sever a lovely neck and send the blood of a German woman spouting high. According to Nazis, the Baroness von Berg was the first female aristocrat to lose her head to their New Justice.


 


 


Sadly, I have no known solid connection to Kaspar Hauser.




1 year ago – losing weight, palm doodles, subway buskers, bluetooth, female health, restless sleep, clicks down, bro contact

2 years ago – fiddling with layouts, queen, cute newt on the patio pic, genographic project, wayfaring, logophile, about trees, euro tests, 3d museum, time-travelling chiro

3 years ago – no eclipse, ed-mv/st, The end of Kim Possible, Newton-cat animation, FL sheriff abuse of power

4 years ago – Frog & manatee palm doodle, city of heroes goes to 3 servers, condos, recovery

5 years ago – Babar Mourns, bro stuff, poem/hat

6 years ago – elephant armor, SOP

7 years ago – easter, usa backs out of kyoto protocol, bob ross, GiftiesGeotarget

9200 – Wednesday

Egg-dying tonight! Tina, Adam, possibly in-laws and BHK for coloring chicken ovals! Pictures to follow tomorrow, no doubt. Chris is a bit late picking me up, so I can keyboard away at this for a little bit.


Haiku in my brain –

that piece of paper
covered in doodles and such
where did I put it?


50 things I’ve done meme continues with item 37. I…

37.’was the data librarian for the Atari computer club, back when Atari actually made a home computer or twelve that were actually useful as office-type gizmo as well as game machines. I had an 800XL with a bank of happy chip modded 1050 floppy drives that I used for a BBS, but I also had an Atari ST, that I learned the bulk of my first usable programming knowledge on. (LOGO on the TI-99/4a notwithstanding – come to think of it, I did some Spirograph stuff on the ST, too.) When the club dissolved, I was left with a huge crate of free software… including some nifty CAD stuff, and a pile of MIDI music software. I dabbled for a while with both, but the programming was more interesting to me at the time. I suspect if you asked me now, I’d be fooling with a keyboard and midi cables. I built my first homebrew sound digitizer on the ST, and used it mostly to do startup, shutdown noises.. not to mention the occasional silly soundboard program.


Chewbacca is quite the dapper Victorian don’t you think?


Via sci-fi scanner – Doctor Who Originally Conceived As an Insane, Malevolent LSD Junkie

 

Everyone knows Doctor Who: He’s the malignant alien time-traveler hopping around the galaxy in an invisible UFO, right? With eyes filled with madness and a heart dripping with hate, he constantly pops tabs of LSD to relive the horrors of his immortal past. When he’s not under the throes of a hallucinogen-induced bender, he is using his time-traveling UFO to pop into the past and stop the caveman from inventing the wheel, Isaac Newton from discovering gravity and Gutenberg from inventing the printing press… all to consolidate a horrific vision of the future that is entirely of his insane devising. Right? Right?

Well, no, of course not: The good Doctor is a benevolent force who hops around the universe in his TARDIS, trying to do good deeds and help the people he loves whenever possible. But bizarrely, this was not the original idea for Doctor Who, as the notes coming out of the BBC’s archives make clear. Rather, he was originally brainstormed to be an insane, malevolent LSD junkie.

“A feature of the new Doctor will be the humour along the lines of the sardonic humour of Sherlock Holmes. The metaphysical change which takes place over 500 years or so is a horrifying experience… in which he relives some of the unendurable moments of his long life…” the archives read. “It’s as if he has had the LSD drug and instead of experiencing the kicks, he has the hell and dank horror which can be its effect.”

Needless to say, the producer shot this idea down, giving us the good Doctor we’ve all grown to love. But, my god. I would kill for this vision of the Doctor: an insane, time-traveling Dr. Gregory House.

A reactionary on a bad LSD trip – Doctor Who?


Say what you want about Obama, but that’s a heck of a speech right there. No doubt I’m the 1,795,403,543rd news source to mention it this morning.


1 year ago – newt and pye on cam, first day at county, Ze:The Show is over, squid vs yellow submarine,

2 years ago – condo area pic with duck, i don’t like cricket

3 years ago – Lunsford, Atlantis, car crash test, voice post

4 years ago – club 977, Wine & Food, itunes, lj spam, Fri-5, nearby donations,First hint of New Dr Who, Newt big-head pic, color associations

5 years ago – heat, bad job recruiter, UT

6 years ago – city relic quiz, got into an argument with Astley, work nonsense, happy ending

7 years ago – awake but paralysed for surgery, com ideas, animal eyesGeotarget