Hairy eyeball doodle

Ah the joys of the Central Valley...
The happy helpful people.
The hundred degree weather.
<end sarcasm>

Made it to Sacramento.

From the iPhone.

On the road to California

Heading to Sacramento today.
Road trip.

From the iPhone

Gasland on HBO

I watched Gasland on HBO last night. You need to find this documentary and watch it if any of the following are true for you:
1. You live on this planet.
2. You like clean water and air.
3. You have any doubt as to how the oil and gas companies feel about you, this planet, and our air and water.
4. You still don't know what "fracking" means.

Gasland, a Sundance 2010 award winner by Josh Fox, on HBO now.

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Echoes:
Protoplasman is an actual comic from Big Bang, he sometimes hangs out with Thunder Girl.
Collage by Jay Larsen.

Flying Slug Doodle

My wife swears she saw a flying slug the other day.
Insists she was attacked, in fact.
I have seen slugs do some pretty weird stuff,
So I choose to believe her.

Shiver Me Timbers

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Post-micturition convulsion syndrome, also colloquially known as pee shivers, piss shivers, piss quiver, quiver shivers, or the shiver shake, is a phenomenon in which one feels a shiver running down the spine following urination.[1] The shiver can produce a brief twitch, which is a form of myoclonus. It should not be confused with micturition syncope, a feeling of faintness following passing urine.
To date, despite years of discussion and theorizing, there is no agreed-on explanation of the phenomenon[2] and no medical research into it. However, it has been mentioned occasionally in columns, and in one Internet poll, where about 83% of males and 58% of females reported experiencing it. By 6 July 2007, more than 24,000 males and more than 1,200 females had responded to the poll on the syndrome.

Myoclonus (pronounced /maɪˈɒklənəs/) is brief, involuntary twitching of a muscle or a group of muscles.The most common time for people to encounter them is while falling asleep (hypnic jerk), but myoclonic jerks are also a sign of a number of neurological disorders. Hiccups are also a kind of myoclonic jerk specifically affecting the diaphragm. Also when a spasm is caused by another person it is known as a "provoked spasm". Shuddering attacks with babies also fall in this category.
Myoclonic jerks may occur alone or in sequence, in a pattern or without pattern.

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Echoes: No Visual Image Required.
I just like the sound of "myoclonic jerks"! Yea? Well you're a hypnic jerk!

Think Robots Doodle

Think Robots? I Think Not!
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Heading to Sacramento, CA next week for the 4th of July Holiday.
If you are in that part of the world the 1st --5th, let me know.

(4) Learning to go Under Water

Symptoms are inconspicuous
Seeing the whole
But not its parts
It’s easy to lose your head
Cameras on the hole
But not the parts
That aren’t under water
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Echoes: Word and Image Assemblage by Jay Larsen
5,000 pixels a day are being captured by this post

Eye in the Sky Doodle

Drawn on my iPhone.

Life Support

Hey, I can bring photos into my iPhone doodles. This could get more
interesting.

Bought Devo's new LP. It is pretty damn good. Peppy and fun. Not burnt
out like their last couple of efforts in the 90's. Something For
Everybody. Go get it if you liked the Spud Boys in the old days. Music
has finally caught up with them ( or devolved to their level If you
believe in intelligent decline).

Jay from the iPhone.

iPhone doodle

It is not easy painting on a phone.

Last day of school

Last day of school for Chani McSpiff.

4th Dimension

The most baffling thing
Is why you would destroy angels
Unless you consider yourself
Separate from the body
Obviously there are dimensions
To this stance which elude me
Delude me
Head and shoulder me
Temple, eye and ear me
Poor Professor Hasley
He tried to warn me

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Echoes: Poem and Collage by Jay Larsen

Slow Motion Catastrophe Estimates

Just in case you have managed to miss the moving target that is Estimates of Oil GUSHING from the BP deep-sea well in the Gulf of Mexico. Here is a handy little chart, showing (not the increase in actual oil gushing into the gulf) the increase in the "estimates" of oil gushing into the gulf. First we only had what BP wanted to tell us (the low numbers). Then when they started showing us video, the numbers went up. Now they are capturing more than they originally said were gushing, so we know the early numbers were crap. And now experts that do not work for BP have finally been given the HD video that BP has been looking at since the beginning of this catastrophe, and low and behold the estimates are now much, much, much larger.
So keep it in mind that these larger numbers, represent what has been gushing from day 1.
But BP doesn't tell us. BP's partners in the government don't tell us.

Howler

The band, Blue-Jay, turns in another album of ethereal pop music with its third full-length release, Howler. Spy novel inspired funk-punk meets orchestral reggae teetering at times on the edge of mawkishness, only to be saved by an elemental honesty that acts as proof that hardcore intensity and indie catchiness are actually complimentary. For fans of reality TV, Navaho blankets, internal combustion engines, lazy Sunday afternoons, rusty bicycle frames found in the basements of antebellum manor houses, and tightly tuned pop hooks sharp enough to pierce Kevlar. Howler zooms in directions not even the band’s long time fans will expect. Cheap, lowbrow and dirty in an exalted and spiritually uplifting way; nothing can compare—when all is said and done, and the turntable stops spinning—with Howler. Critics say the band has crashed on the reef of Sell-Outville; I say they are just reaching escape velocity. And this critic is ready to take that ride.
-- Flavio de LaToyota, Spun Magazine.

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Echoes: Words and Collage by Jay Larsen

I've always had a fascination with music reviews. Writing about music always seems like a futile endeavor, but sometimes it is oddly uplifting in a poetry of the absurd sort of way. All music reviews basically come down to "I listened to this music and liked it (or didn't). You should try listening (or not) as well."

LA LA LA

LA LA LA
Laugh
LA LA LA
Launch
LA LA LA
Land
LA LA LA
Laze

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Echoes: LA LA LA words and pictures by Jay LA LA LA

Big Things in LA

There is no Los Angeles...

Aquaman Fail--Bring in Namor

Well, Aquaman seems to have failed to stop the BP Oil Gusher.
But you can't trust those DC Comic Characters.
So maybe we need to turn to Marvel's Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner and Prince of Atlantis.
Surely the Savage Prince can defend his undersea home from the man-made nightmare beneath the waves. Maybe if Sue Storm asks him nice he would help us.

ABChallenge

A: Challenge

B: The Person To

C: Possibilities

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D: Echoes: Collage Message by J:

Dr Strange has closed worse fissures

Dr Strange has closed worse fissures than the Gulf Gusher.
Here he is attempting to close some multi-dimensional rift that threatened reality itself in the 1970s.
So if Kirk and Spock (or Data and Geordie) aren't available, maybe we can summon Dr Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme of Earth to come to our defense?

"The rig's on fire! I told you this was gonna happen."

A prominent Houston attorney with a long record of winning settlements from oil companies says he has new evidence suggesting that the Deepwater Horizon's top managers knew of problems with the rig before it exploded last month, causing the worst oil spill in US history. Tony Buzbee, a lawyer representing 15 rig workers and dozens of shrimpers, seafood restaurants, and dock workers, says he has obtained a three-page signed statement from a crew member on the boat that rescued the burning rig's workers. The sailor, who Buzbee refuses to name for fear of costing him his job, was on the ship's bridge when Deepwater Horizon installation manager Jimmy Harrell, a top employee of rig owner Transocean, was speaking with someone in Houston via satellite phone. Buzbee told Mother Jones that, according to this witness account, Harrell was screaming, "Are you fucking happy? Are you fucking happy? The rig's on fire! I told you this was gonna happen."
Whoever was on the other end of the line was apparently trying to calm Harrell down. "I am fucking calm," he went on, according to Buzbee. "You realize the rig is burning?"
At that point, the boat's captain asked Harrell to leave the bridge. It wasn't clear whether Harrell had been talking to Transocean, BP, or someone else.
...
Other rig workers have also claimed that they were pressured by BP and their supervisors to cut corners. Transocean roustabout Truitt Crawford told the Coast Guard that he overheard senior management saying that BP was "taking shortcuts" by replacing drilling mud in the well with saltwater, which would have provided less weight to contain the well's surging pressure. Transocean's Williams told 60 Minutes that a supervisor had dismissed evidence that the well's blowout preventer had been damaged. And workers with Halliburton, the well's cementing contractor, had complained that BP's use of cement "was against our best practices" and told the oil company that it would likely have "a SEVERE gas flow problem" unless the well's casings were centered more carefully.

-- From Mother Jones
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Echoes: Never underestimate the ability of corporate executives to override good engineers, usually in the pursuit of lower costs and higher profits.

We need Kirk and Spock

Apparently, the ship sucking up leaking oil from the BP Gusher is named the Discoverer Enterprise. They are sucking up oil and gas and burning off the methane gas from a large pipe stuck off the edge of the ship.

I think if Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock were on this Enterprise, they would figure out a way to stop this gusher.

Dr. Joye, from the University of Georgia, is researching underwater oil plumes in the Gulf oil spill. I got the photo above from her blog, which she is posting to from a research vessel in the Gulf. They are trying to track these giant under-water plumes. Please visit the Gulf Oil Blog for details.

I think Rachel Maddow is doing some of the best reporting on this gusher on TV.

I think no one has sufficiently summed up just how risky and ultimately unrewarding this whole underwater drilling activity is for our civilization and our planet. I've seen analysis that predicts that all the underwater drilling that can ever be done will only extend our global supply of oil by 6 months or so. I'm not sure that is worth it.

Astronaut Noir

Snail Doodle

From the iPhone

Persistence of Ghosts

The Persistence of Ghosts
Illustration by Jay Bird

Still Life with Still Alive

From the iPhone.

View from the Couch

Stuck on the couch with a cold.
Watching too much TV.
And hoping this thing runs it's course
As quickly as possible.

From the iPhone.

Message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients

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Echoes: A Proximity Collage

A Rose By Any Other Name...

Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, becomes...
British Petroleum, becomes...
Beyond Petroleum, becomes...
A Slow Motion Nightmare in the Gulf of Mexico.
But does it still smell so sweet?

Apparently relief wells are the only proven method for stopping underwater oil gushers.
And they take 3 to 10 months to complete.
But I am sure that within the next 24-48 hours BP will have thought of some other distraction to occupy the press. And that will give them 24-48 hours to come up with the next distraction.

Maybe one of these long shot maneuvers will work. But I find it interesting that Canada requires off-shore drilling to include the simultaneous drilling of a relief well, because relief wells are the only proven method for stopping underwater oil gushers.

Some Days Off Are Like This...

...Some Days Off Are Nothing Like This