Etc

More Than A Game, Less Than A War

THERE ARE SPORTS WHICH CALL forth the most primal emotions in order to exorcise them for the good of the community — sports which make lesser men wonder and cringe, and old women pick up a frying pan — sports which proclaim a national character unchanged by time and politing circumstance — sports which sort of make me wish I was the sort of man who plays them. Forged among the Orkney Islands where men wrest their very living from the hoary North Sea …. Ba’.

(If you’re reading this on Christmas or New Year’s Day, watch it live at http://www.thelongpartnership.co.uk/profile/orkney_webcam.php or http://www.visitorkney.com/webcams.asp.)

Writing

What Do You Say To A Partly Naked Woman?

SHE WAS WALKING UP THE hill toward us through the sea of sprawled bodies surrounding the stage at Laguna Seca Speedway, where some friends and I were enjoying three days of the Grateful Dead and Los Lobos in the summer of 1988.

My own life was at a crossroads. I was coming from a year aboard the Golden Hinde II (many stories there, oh yes) but hadn’t decided whether to hitchhike to Alaska and work on a fishing boat or return to the Northern California Renaissance Faire and eventually settle into landbound life.

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Living

Pithyism #38N122W

NOTHING HAPPENS IN THE WORLD without someone from Sonoma County being involved in some way. (Those who know, know.)

Crit

A Thought On The “Singularity”

HAVING AWAITED (INSERT PIVOTAL WORLD catalyst here) since I was, at least, 15, I’d like to offer the observation that the Singularity (and similar event-horizons) may be more profitably treated as analogous to the speed of light — infinitely approachable, never attainable — for as long as someone still has to take out the %$#@!ing garbage.
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(Or … maybe “in” the Singularity, we’ll finally share the task equally; an ethical compulsion through wholistic understanding. Since the whole point of the Singularity is unpredictable difference from everything which came before, I’ll just place my order right here and now.)

Torah

Anatomy and Metaphysiology: States of Grace or Tangent

PERHAPS BEFORE DELVING DEEPER INTO Things Glimpsed it would be helpful to explain my terms, and how I arrived at them.

Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve been fascinated/obssessed/entranced by “God,” or the “Great Spirit,” or “It What Is” or more specifically the undisclosable Reality behind those words. I was often taken aback by such pop-in-the-head questions as “What came before God?” or “What would an infinitely tall stack of paper cups look like?” or “Does the bathroom wallpaper really have little toilets all over it, or does it just look that way to me?” (Sadly, ’twas the former.)

I say this to tell you that I’ve been both looking for and halfway expecting Weird Inner Experiences all my life. When they actually began happening, though, I honestly didn’t know what to make of them.

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Living

Pithyism #0.0

IF YOU ARE SEARCHING FOR Truth, It’s somewhere It shouldn’t be.