Why is Cthulu in my water?

A: Because some Japanese toy company thought plastic jelly fish would
make bottled water more fun.

I wonder if Japanese bloggers write about wacky American products?

2 of my favorite things

Sexy redheads and big bass...

Is that a big fish above your head?

Or are you just happy to see me?

Cabelas

Chani with the trout.

Black Bear Diner

Franchises open up everywhere these days.

Higher Walls Bigger Cages

Cold, Clear, Crisp, Christmas.

It's a beautiful Christmas morning. There are eagles in the trees and
dogs leaving presents in the frosty grass.
And I'm home with my family.

Merry Christmas!

Early Gift

Major Thunder knows what he wants. And he wants it now.

Saw Avatar on the BIG Screen

Evelyn took us all to see Avatar on the big IMAX 3-D screen at the Pacific Science Center.
The visuals are stunning. The action is non stop. The plot is a little cliched, but don't let that stop you. After all, the plot to Star Wars is cliched, that hasn't stopped us from loving it all these years.
With the 3-D going and all the aerial shots, I was actually getting kind of air sick. But wow! The visuals are fantastic. I wished I could stop the film and look around some more. I especially liked the forest at night, it was like being at the bottom of the ocean.
I am kind of looking forward to see this film again without the giant IMAX and the 3-D because it was a little overwhelming and disorienting. I'd like a chance to see some of details of the design a little better because every shot was packed with intriguing details.

Thanks Evelyn--We had a great time.

Do Cowgirls Dream of Efficient Asset Allocation?

An appropriate investment model
Gives a girl comfort
And pretax savings
That makes a painless rollover
A guaranteed part
Of your short-term horizon*
----------------------------
*All investment schemes involve risk.
You should consider all the factors before making important decisions.
Past performance is no guarantee of future performance.
Besides, she just may not be that into you.
----------------------------
Echoes: Don’t ask me—Ask Google.
I know it has no pentameter, but that is no reason to downgrade my verse.
And you know it’s a collage.
So if you walk out that door, you will never find free verse or collage like this again.
I’m just saying.

Chani's Spiffy Solo

Chani was a baritone soloist at her high school winter concert last
night. She sounded great and looked spiffy and splang in her tuxedo.
We are proud of you, Kiddo.

Late but beautiful

With Solstice just around the corner, sunrise isn't until almost 8 am.
But they are lovely.
The sunsets at 4 pm, on the other hand, are just dark.

This Much Everyday

5-Star Reviews
Highly Recommended
A Must See Hit
Direct to You
Eliminate the Middleman
As Seen on TV

Breaking Some Things...Saving Others

It's the end of the year mad dash.

Try to fit a whole month's worth of work into three weeks.

Cut our expenses but try and get clients to spend more.

Do without those things that we have broken or cut off.

Convince our customers that they can't live without us.

Days are getting shorter.

It feels like we are running out of time.

But renewal is right around the corner.

Out of the darkness a new year will be born.

Time to take stock.

Time to throw off the truly unnecessary.

Time to take comfort from simple things,

the things that give you warmth and joy,

like holding hands beneath the blankets.

Solstice is almost here.

Fill up the darkness with inner light.

So the sun will be drawn back to us again.

Solstice is almost here.

Turn and engage with another year.

For it is a new year,

no matter what we have saved,

no matter what we have broken.

Solstice is here.

-----------------------------------

Echoes: Photo Montage by Erik Johansson

Bottom photo of my home last Christmas

Happy Holidays to Everyone

Solstice, Yule, Hanukkah, Christmas, whichever ones you hold dear.

The Snow Monster is Threatening the Cosmonauts

It's Snowing

And Chani is happy.

Is it a hoax if it results in something real?

Just read about a "literary hoax" from the 1940s:

"recall the Ern Malley hoax. In the 1940s, two Australian poets bearing a grudge against Modernism in general, and against an avant-gardist named Max Harris in particular, spent an afternoon crafting Ern Malley and his "tragic life-work"--a purposefully bad product of collage and other Modernist technique. Ethel Malley, Ern's equally nonexistent sister, sent his poetry, along with a brave biography ("As he wished, he was cremated at Rookwood") to Harris's magazine, Angry Penguins. Harris adored and printed Malley's work. The mischief-makers, James McAuley and Harold Stewart, outed Ern as fake and the poems as jokes. Hilarity ensued.
And yet--as David Lehman wrote in Jacket magazine--Max Harris and his colleagues insisted to the end that the poems were good. "The myth is sometimes greater than the creator," Harris remarked. Lehman noted that the 1992 "Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry" includes all of Malley's writing. A sample:
Where I have lived
The bed-bug sleeps in the seam, the cockroach

Inhabits the crack and the careful spider

Spins his aphorisms in the corner. . . .

There is a moment when the pelvis

Explodes like a grenade."

That cracks me up!

I read more about the hoax at Wikipedia:

"McAuley and Stewart, it turned out, had invented Ern and Ethel Malley out of thin air. They had written the whole of The Darkening Ecliptic in an afternoon, writing down the first thing that came into their heads, lifting words and phrases from the Concise Oxford Dictionary, a Collected Shakespeare and a Dictionary of Quotations: "We opened books at random, choosing a word or phrase haphazardly. We made lists of these and wove them in nonsensical sentences. We misquoted and made false allusions. We deliberately perpetrated bad verse, and selected awkward rhymes from a Ripman's Rhyming Dictionary."

My emphasis added.

Now that sounds like how I write poetry: semi-random phrases, stream of consciousness or nonsensical sentences. But does that make my poetry a hoax? Or does it mean that McAuley and Stewart in their effort to embarass a publisher just came up with a new method of poetic construction?

Harris "re-published the Ern Malley poems, maintaining that whatever McAuley and Stewart had intended to do, they had, in fact, produced some memorable poems."

I leave you with another taste of hoax method poetry:

Now I find that once more I have shrunk
To an interloper, robber of dead men's dream,
I had read in books that art is not easy
But no one warned that the mind repeats
In its ignorance the vision of others. I am still
The black swan of trespass on alien waters.

--Ern Malley

Like Clockwork

Academic discussions
Quickly become political battles
With interest waning
But oh so firmly entrenched
We get told that Alice
Will take her ball and go home
If we don’t smash the machine
To prove that it used to work

What a tantrum
What an unnecessary increase in volume
With no increase in content
Or in reason

Crash goes the crystal
Sprung goes the spring
Grind all the gears
Punch up the volume
Bring on the tears

Like Clockwork
-------------------------
Echoes: Verse and Collage by Jay Larsen

Projection Mechanism

How does this projector work?
Why are there always so many angry alien monsters when I am in a foul
mood?
Gods, I hate it when every alien we meet is bad tempered.
Somebody turn on the bright light so we can see this thing work.
Hey! Look at that. It's my butt on the screen.
I think I've seen this movie before.
It stars a mild mannered cosmonaut, if I am not mistaken.
It doesn't end well, if I remember right.
Hey! Who is running this projector anyway?

Hoaxes are a Fraud and I don't believe in them

From: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/cartoons/index.html

2010 Predictions

As the current year comes to a close, it is time to cast our inner eye forward into the future. And who better to make predictions for next year than Major Thunder a cosmonaut with a unique perspective—from 23 million light years away, all our problems seem small and quite frankly invisible. He has agreed to look in his alien crystal ball and tell us what he sees.

Major Thunder’s 2010 Predictions:
-2010 should be the year that the 2012 hysteria is diffused by rational evaluations of previous end of the world fears. But it won’t be.
-Next year some celebrity you have never heard of, on a reality TV show you have never watched, will do something 35% of your friends and neighbors have done, and it will be a Huge Scandal that takes up 3 weeks of 24-hour news cycles.
-A plastic gizmo will be invented that automates a task you never do manually, but it will be the must-have technology of 2010 and you will preorder it from an online retailer for 50% more than your lazy friends will pay for the item when it finally hits store shelves and fails to live up to expectations.
-Repair costs to fix your commuter vehicle will feel like a personal punishment from divine forces, and you will be astounded by the expense, even though you paid twice that much last year and the year before that for repairs you failed to anticipate then as well. But you have to go to work, damn it, so you will pay it, even though the mechanic is a highway robber.
-Political pundits will be replaced on cable television with an iPhone app that responds to any question with a huge database of phrases culled from Zen, Taoist, and Confucius sayings. “So Dan, how do you think the latest scandal will affect the Senator in the next election?” “Show me the sound of one hand clapping, Chris.” “Are you telling me, Dan, that this stuff won’t stick to the Senator?” “When one can do nothing, Chris, what can one do?”
-Some pop star will keep coming down, coming down like a monkey. But it’s alright. Cos tonight, tonight, tonight, oh oh, gonna make it right tonight, tonight, oh oh.
-Your coworkers will be completely bored by your yearly recital of how huge your latest unexpected repair bill was for your commuter vehicle, which is always breaking. But you paid it, so at least you are at work to bore your coworkers.
-You will look back fondly on 2009 as the year a cosmonaut wished you Happy Holidays!

The Holidays are coming...

The Holidays are coming...
On this planet they don't just have a war on Christmas. Christmas
fights back.
It is a good thing I had a head start and fast feet or those
falalalalas might have decked my halls. And don't even ask me about
the jingle bells. I Said Dont Ask Me!!!

What is more likely?

Monkeys are trained to put on our makeup?

Or we all wake up?

Those monkeys do wear cute tuxedos...

'There hasn't been two seconds of intelligent discussion about living standards in Afghanistan'

Nieman Watchdog: 'There hasn't been two seconds of intelligent discussion about living standards in Afghanistan': "The poverty in Afghanistan is almost beyond imagining. Thirty Afghans die from TB every day; life expectancy is 43 years; per capita income is $426; only 13% have access to sanitary drinking water; fewer than one in four are literate; access to electricity is among the lowest in the world. Conditions for women are brutal. If Obama plans to address these issues, he's pretty much keeping it secret, points out world poverty expert Jeffrey Sachs. But without addressing them, can stepped-up American military involvement succeed? Or is it bound to fail?"

It is probably a safe bet that a sizable majority of Americans have not been informed by the news media about the extent of the poverty in the country that the United States under President George W. Bush selected as its first overseas battleground in what used to be called “the war on terror.” For example:
Afghanistan is the fifth least developed country in the world – 174th out of 178 –according to a November 2007 United Nations “National Human Development Report (NHDR). The U.N. global human development index, which ranks countries on individual income, life expectancy and literacy rate, placed Afghanistan ahead of only the African nations of Burkina Faso, Mali, Sierra Leone and Niger. (The next such report will be published in March 2010.)

Afghanistan has a gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of $426 as of 2008, according to the World Bank, the lowest in Asia and the fifth lowest in the world after Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Liberia. (The CIA World Factbook puts the Afghanistan figure higher at $800 for 2008, which would be the 11th worst in the world.) An estimated 60-80 percent of the country’s population live on less than $1 a day.

Afghanistan is the seventh most unequal country in the world, according to the ‘Gini coefficient,’ a measure of the gap separating a country’s richest and poorest citizens. The higher the country’s number on a scale of one to one-hundred, the more unequal the society. In the most recent ratings, the most unequal societies were Namibia 70.2, Equatorial Guinea 65, Lesotho 63.2, Sierra Leone 62.9, Angola 62, Central African Republic 61.3, and Afghanistan and Gabon 60.

Life expectancy for Afghan citizens is 43 years, compared to 59 years for low-income countries worldwide, according to the World Bank. The 2007 U.N. NHD Report noted that life expectancy in the country has declined from 44.5 years in 2003.

In a population estimated at 28.4 million, one-fourth of all Afghans “do not meet their minimum food requirements, with 24 percent of households characterized by poor food consumption,” according to the U.N. NHD Report. Almost half of Afghan children under five are underweight.

More than 30 Afghans die from tuberculosis each day, according to the U.N. global human development index.

Afghans’ access to electricity is among the lowest in the world, according to the World Bank, and only 13 percent of Afghans have access to safe drinking water and 12 percent to adequate sanitation.

Afghanistan “has one of the lowest adult literacy rates among developing countries,” according to the U.N. NHD Report. Between 2003 and 2005 (the last cited figures), the report said, literacy rates for adults over 15 actually fell from 28.7 percent to 23.5 percent.

Some 80 percent of Afghan women are illiterate, 54 percent of girls under the age of 18 are married, and 68 percent of girls ages 7-13 are not enrolled in school, according to the advocacy organization Womankind Worldwide. Only half of the schools have buildings. Enrollment rates for women in the primary, secondary and tertiary levels are almost half that of men. Violence and sexual abuse against women is widespread.

Some 15,000 Afghan women die each year from pregnancy-related causes, and the maternal mortality rate is the second highest in the world. As bad as these figures are, the U.N. NHD Report cited Afghanistan’s “steady progress in improving its health services and reducing child and maternal mortality rates.” Mortality rates for children under five years old were down from 257 per 1,000 births in 2001 to a still-alarming 160 per 1,000 births in 2006, according to the World Bank. (The CIA World Factbook put the figure at 152 in 2008.)

Afghanistan’s agricultural production (not including the opium trade) fell by more than 30 percent in 2008, the World Bank reported. Agriculture makes up more than 30 percent of the country’s GDP, which grew overall by 2 to 3 percent in 2008-2009.

Afghanistan is the fifth most corrupt country in the world, according to Transparency International, a global anti-corruption watchdog organization.

It is against this backdrop of economic and social hardships that the United States is expanding the war. How much progress in fighting poverty and providing sustainable development can be made in a country that has been ravaged by wars for most of the last 30 years? One does not need to have lived in a war-torn country to conclude that the answer is, not much.

Another Frosty AM

And by frosty I mean 19 degrees with more on the way.
I just hope it doesn't snow.

Coldfire Glow

Sunrise from the front porch. Cold but beautiful.

Frosty this Morning.

It must be December.

Type, Monkey. Type.

Been super busy at work. I guess that's good. Hopefully I can check in
with the cosmonauts soon.
--Jay

Holiday was relaxing

Played some games. Ate tooooooo much good food. Still trying to get
the heater fixed. There was burned out fuse, cost $150, now the
igniter is burned out, cost $125. Eventually I hope to have heat in my
house again.
Hope your Thanksgiving was pleasurable.

Apparantly the crew of the CSS Ensemble spent the day playing some
form of alien billiards. I'm not sure I understand all the rules.
--Jay

Happy Thankspinning!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving Holiday.
From Major Thunder and Commander Echo and the entire crew of the CSS
Ensemble.

I'm all ears

What's the giant phone for?

The men with super parabolic ears.

Sit Toad, said the Door Mouse

Echo: Hey, you can call me the cheddar cat. That is one giant toadstool.
Thunder: Cheddar cat? What are you talking about?
E: You know, that story, Alice in Thunderland. The smiley cat sits on
top of the big mushroom eating cheese.
T: That's a hooka smoking cat-of-pillars. And the story was Echo in
Wonderland. Just don't go eating any of that fungus.
E: Too late Alice... Now what did I do with my pocket watch, Tweedle
Dumb?

The Trials of Horacio Bacon

There were just some things
With which Horacio Bacon
Would not put up
One of which
As a matter of principle
Was the condescending look
On the face of that youngster
Lieutenant Hughes Grant
Recently transferred
From some colonial outpost
Where it could not be expected
That manners and decorum
Would be transmitted
With the requisite vigor
And sacred solemnity
With which it had always been
Applied to the knuckles
And bared backsides
Of deserving young men
Fortunate enough to find themselves
Being raised within the warm embrace
Of institutions of learning
Where discipline is the paramount
Duty and responsibility
Of all members of the august faculty
Within those hallowed halls
Deep within the brave heart
Of proper industry and culture
Which is and always will be
The blessed empire
Long may she persevere
In a world increasingly afflicted
By backwater ignorance
And lazy no good insolence
Like that projected
By the smug countenance
Of Lieutenant Hughes Grant
Upon the undeserving
But decidedly superior
Brow of Horace Bacon
Of whom it must be said
By those who chronicle such things
In these degenerate times
Bore it without complaint
------------------------------------------------
Echoes: Thank you for browsing at Jay Larsen’s Thunder Echo
Fine purveyors of prose and collagery since 2004
And none of that crass bloggery round here

Level?

Echo: Survey modules have to be placed in a secure level position.
Thunder: Don't quote regulations at me, Echo.
E: Just raise that strut 1.22 degrees.
T: The meter is in the green already.
E: Missaligned instruments will give faulty readings. We'll have run
all these experiments all over again.
T: God you get bitchy when you are EVA. You sure your CO2 levels are
within parameters?
E: Now who wants to recheck the levels?
T: Very funny, Echo. Very funny.

Such Primitive Art Forms

The natives of this world have such primitive art forms. They put
simple messages on each other's walls, often repeating what others
have left on their walls. Most have to do with mating or images of
themselves, as if to say "here I am" over and over again.
Fear not citizens. I will post more updates later. And the crew and I
look forward to your comments on our mission.

Relations of Reynard

Bottom jaw jutting out like a llama
Teeth protruding like a, well like a llama
Reynard regards regal rectangles
Surrounded by plastic chairs
Retard! He screams at himself
Startling the starlings and crows
Who circle and cry, circle and cry
Complaining of finding themselves
Back on that endless wheel of pain
That torture of endless torment
Which can only be accurately called
By one name, one heartless noun
One subject, one object,
One dreaded event
Inevitable as well as unavoidable

FAMILY REUNION

Slowly the crows and starlings
Settle back onto the wires
Staring steely stares
The cousins and uncles
Step mothers and aunts
Shovel green Jell-O
Onto sagging yellow paper plates
Retard! They scream at Reynard
Grab a plate before the ambrosia is all gone
Bottom jaw jutting out like a llama
Teeth protruding like a, well like a llama
Reynard vows never to attend
A reunion again
----------------------------------
Echoes: Poem and Collage by Jay Larsen
Jell-O brought to you by family reunions everywhere
Where people are swimming you should shout,
Watch Out, There Are Llamas!!

Environmental Control Issues

Commander Echo and I were checking the Environmental Control Unit
(ECU) on our Lander when we were interrupted by an indigenous reptilian
biped of some kind. He let out a terrible roar and fireworks shot out
of his mouth and the ECU exploded like a cardboard box filled with
smoke bombs. Echo and I ran around shouting like idiots until the
lizard man finally wattled away. But now our ECU is broken and we are
using space blankets and emergency heaters to stay warm until SCC
techs can talk us through repair scenarios.
Damn mutant lizards! The radiation he was emitting must have made us act like crazed extras in a bad movie.

Vigilance!

Herr Eksen's Sind Brygge

Herr Eksen’s mind often concocts
Images of chorus lines dancing
As he plays dodge the curb
And squints into oncoming headlights
Oh, if his wife only knew
What a brew
What a wonderful stew
That spin the tires round and round
Handling curves of road and mind
While gripping the wheel so tight

Lay off the horn, Herr Eksen
Stay within the lines
The way you drive, Sir
Bends all the rules, Sir
Sind Brygge Lane is not wide

There really is no stopping
Herr Eksen when his mind
Is so thoroughly stewed in brew
Thank god he drives mostly at night
When pedestrians are few
The chorus girls are many
But pedestrians are few
---------------------------------
Echoes: Poem and Collage by Jay Larsen
"Sind brygge" = Danish "mind brew"

Sung to the tune of Auld Lang Zinger

And NO, I am not condoning drinking and driving

Slow Down and Recharge

Even a famous cosmonaut has to slow down and recharge the fuel tanks
once in a while.
Hey, what's that red light indicate Odo?

What it means to be a Cosmonaut

Greetings children of Ironica.

This is Major Thunder reporting from the surface of an alien world some where near [REDACTED BY PSA] over [REDACTED BY PSA] from home.
I have been asked to send a message describing what it means to me to be a cosmonaut and to explore alien worlds on behalf of all the people of Ironica, praise be to our Great Leaders.
I can tell you that being a cosmonaut means spending lots of time alone and very far from home, while always being in constant communications with Space Central Control. Although the [REDACTED BY PSA] delay makes ordinary conversations impossible, I communicate with my support team primarily through sub ether data bursts and [REDACTED BY PSA] and the occasional [REDACTED BY PSA] on special holidays and such. And let me tell you, messages from home are always appreciated.
Even though the crew and I spend a lot of time alone, we know that [REDACTED BY PSA] of dollars and years of work have gone into developing the systems that keep us safe even on an alien planet. Every time I check a pressure gauge or repair a faulty [REDACTED BY PSA] on my suit I am reminded of all the people whose lives and work have gone into supporting me in this enterprise. I am honored to be the representative of Ironica, praise be to our Great Leaders, and its great people.
I know the Planetary Security Agency will not let me talk about specific [REDACTED BY PSA] or scientific information or theories that might allow our enemies to [REDACTED BY PSA]. But we cosmonauts have been supplied with the best equipment our scientists and engineers could provide.
Every day we hope to discover new and useful materials and information to help to better understand the Universe, science, aliens and even [REDACTED BY PSA].

I look forward to sharing our adventures with you all as our [REDACTED BY PSA] mission continues.

With Hope and Praises to our Great Leaders,
Major Thunder
Commander of the [REDACTED BY PSA]

THIS MESSAGE HAS BEEN CLEARED FOR GENERAL RELEASE BY THE PLANTARY SECURITY AGENCY 20091116 BY AGENT [REDACTED BY PSA]

We brought flags

We claim your shiny dish technology
In the name of Planet Ironica!
But only if you get HBO & Showtime.

We who are about to evolve

Salute you, Monkey Boy.

Friendly Life Forms

Hush my darling. The lion sleeps tonight.
Watch out for ahweemoweps...

Enrty into the Atmosphere

Atmospheric insertion was rough. But any alien landing you can walk
away from is a good alien landing.

Sugar Bumble

Blind Devotion

Get out of the kitchen
Turn up the heat
Get out of the kitchen
Vampires can't be beat
by blind faith
or devotional porn
Get out of the kitchen
There's too much red meat

Blind Beat

Blind beat
Alien rhythm
Synthetic Splang