STAND UP: Stand Down The Junta

HOW DO YOU END A STANDOFF?

YOU STAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHTS!

At which point, the STANDOFF becomes a STAND DOWN.

(After all, YOU VOTE WITH YOUR FEET EVERY DAY.)

If you STAND UP TO THE ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES of the bush-cheney-rumsfeld-rice-wolfowitz- ...JUNTA

THE STANDOFF will END...the JUNTA will stand down.

WHEN "WE, THE PEOPLE" STAND UP FOR OUR RIGHTS,

the junta Will stand down!

CLEARCUTTING At Its Earthmoving Crudest

Yesterday, just one reader came to "my hiding place" to visit. Thank you, Secret Visitor, for your visit! Some of these posts are written for you only! (Like yesterday, Friday.)

Though one day I had over one hundred site visitors, I do not write to garner a high volume of site visits. If only one person visits and the blog entry feels right (expressive, honest, truthful), then I am satisfied.

Which brings me to today's news. Actually yesterday's news.

While driving to Arcata yesterday with my dog, "Dunebuggy", I noticed large (many-acre large) gashes of CLEARCUTTING AT ITS EARTHMOVING CRUDEST in the National and State Forests just across Highway 101 from Prairie Creek Redwoods in Humboldt and Del Norte Counties. The gates to this part of the Publicly-owned forest were open, suggesting that THIS DEFORESTATION IS ONGOING.

Returning from Arcata in the evening, I turned off at LADY BIRD JOHNSON Grove, just North of Orick,CA, and checked on the acres and acres of stored, felled, OLD GROWTH REDWOODS stored at Simpson Lumber on the north side of
"Lady Bird Road": ACRES OF STORED, FELLED, OLD GROWTH REDWOODS--some of it rotting.

As a few folks profit from THE DEFORESTATION OF IRREPLACABLE REDWOODS.....IN THE NAME OF 'PRIVATIZATION OF OUR NATIONAL AND STATE FORESTS'.....we leave it to our grandchildren to plant the seedlings that may become OLD GROWTH REDWOODS many generations in the future.

I am trying to 'stay positive' and visualize a 'best-case scenario'.

Oh, I nearly forgot: Dunebuggy had a great day running on the beach yesterday.

"When it's 110 degrees in the shade"

My name in lights I do not crave

For public ardor I was not made

About my talents you need not rave

When it's 110 degrees in the shade


I am "of the meadows": my name, desPres ("daypray")

Of ancestral shepherds is my family made

Please spare me from familial pride

When it's 110 degrees in the shade


Why talk about weather, pride, and family name?

Isn't it really all the same?

Fame and Fortune are but the Joker's Game...

When it's 110 degrees in the shade.

THE 'ENDGAME' AGE OF PETROLEUM: SYRIANA

SATURDAY I WENT TO SEE SYRIANA, STARRING GEORGE CLOONEY.

IT WAS A GOOD SUSPENSE FILM.

IT KEPT ME ON MY TOES BY CUTTING FROM SUBPLOT TO SUBPLOT.

TO SAY THE FILM IS ABOUT OIL DOES NOT DO THE CINEMATOGRAPHY JUSTICE. AFTER VIEWING OIL WELLS, PIPELINES, TANKERS AND STORAGE FACILITIES AS CINEMATIC BACKGROUND DURING THE COURSE OF THE MOVIE, THE OVERALL CINEMATIC EFFECT BECOMES THE MOVIE'S UNSPOKEN STORY: THAT THE OIL EMPIRE IS A COLOSSUS ...AND A LUCRATIVE COLOSSUS, AT THAT.

THE MOVIE IS ABOUT OIL PROFITEERS' ENGINEERING INTERNATIONAL POWER GRABS OF THE MOST RUTHLESS SORT, INCLUDING ASSASSINATION ("BEIRUT RULES").

THIS IS NOT A MOVIE THAT ENGENDERS OPTIMISM IN ME.

WHILE IT HIGHLIGHTS MANY OF THE CONTRADICTIONS PRESENT IN THE 'ENDGAME' AGE OF PETROLEUM, IT FASHIONS NO EASY ANSWERS TO THE GLOBAL DEMAND FOR OIL AND THE HEGEMONY OF GLOBAL OIL CAPITALISM OVER PEOPLES AND GOVERNMENTS WORLDWIDE.

"Call It a Day and Hit the Hay"

It snowed today south of town.

I was going to drive south to Arcata to spend the day there, but cautiousness prompted me to turn around and head back to Crescent City and off of the highway while the weather was inclement.

Hence, I spent the day at home dozing off while my wife, Cathy, watched the home decorating shows on HGTV.

I watched some of the PAC-10 Basketball Playoffs from the Staples Center in Los Angeles...and then Cathy and I watched C-SPAN for 1/2 hour: Gens. Abizaid and Pace, and Secs. Rice and Rumsfeld attempting to justify another 65 Billion Dollar supplemental appropriation for the Administration's failed Iraq Occupation.

After 1/2 hour of listening to a whole lot of doubletalk, Cathy announced she couldn't stand to listen to their SH** anymore...

And so...we called it a day and 'hit the hay'.

And the Cinematography is a "wow!": Brokeback Mountain

This evening I went to see Ang Lee's BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN.

Wow.

It is good, as well as powerful.

Yes, I have heard and seen the satires...and the jokes...and the reviews of the film that focus on the homosexuality in the movie...and leave unexamined the heterosexual relationships in the film, as well as the question: "Which of the films relationships are more 'natural'...and why?"

One will have to see the movie to attempt an answer to this question.

The movie asks profound questions...or, perhaps, examines some of the subtler paradoxes of emotional intimacy, as well as the relationships that compete for our attention in adulthood: friendship, marriage, parenting.

As I experienced the movie, I felt sure it will become a classic.

It is a film for the ages.

Even When I Do Not...

Even when I do not post an entry in my weblog, a very few people still stop by my webpage...in browsing mood, I guess...which pleases as well as 'blesses' me with a knowing that someone cares enough to visit.

If that sounded a bit 'sermonly', sermon's over.

The illusion of another's "presence", immanence, can be wonderful as well as overpowering...

and...most imporatantly, by way of non-sequitor, it can keep us engaged in LIVING...which in MOST MOMENTS of existing in this shape and form- and animation- sure has the alternative 'beaten a mile' (a half-mile? quarter-mile? ten yards? a foot? an inch? a nose?)...anyway, 'sure has the alternative beaten'.