108 rant & Ruminations
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| Earth flatenend |
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| Earth |
WE'LL MISS YOU, MR. FULLER
Younger followers of
this miserable rant probably don't remember Buckminster (Who would name their
little baby "Buckminster?) but let's just call him "Bucky"
Fuller., after all, I believe he was the first to remind us that Earth was
"Spaceship Earth". His geodesic structures are world known. I
had even bought one second hand that was
just taken down to build on my own Top
of the World in Laguna Beach. However, I needed to find some stainless steel
strapping tape to pull it off, but my finances were in jeopardy and the
erection was off, but my favorite invention of his was the first map of the
world that did not distort the size of the
Iceland which I never could determine the relative size. But he derived the form from dividing the land masses
into a dodecahedron sphere where each continent is whole.
MAX HEADROOM
The saga continues. I
finally discovered the there was a whole series of 'Interviews' (The complete
Series) by the TV screen but everyone forgot about the original movie. I
finally located it and will give you a rundown about it soon. However, I ended
up on a porno website and had difficulty getting out of it, if you know what I
mean. I did recognize the actor Matt Frewer (Max) in a Netflix series by the
Canadians called " Intelligence", which gives an interesting view of
our Spy agencies (CSI, FBI, NSA, etc), currently. Anyway, I finally tracked down a copy of the
virtually unknown movie and have it on VHS. You do know what a VHS tape is,
don't you? Most don't know he got his name due to his running thru a gate on a
motorcycle and nearly getting killed. The barrier said
"MAX. HEADROOM".
A BRIEF HISTORY OF COFFEE
This may not be relevant
to the dark stuff you load with milk, sugar and what ever, but coffee
originally was a 'wake you up" system derived from earlier
monasteries. Some Europeans still drink
it full strength, nothing like the watered down beverage we Westerners like.
Maybe it originated in Yemen,
near Sana'a. Or was it Ethiopia? The story goes like this; A shepherd noticed
his goats (or was it sheep?) up and about all nite. He saw they were eating
fruit from bushes so he tried some and was invigerated and his acuity increased.
But he had only been eating the fruit and it was discovered soon enough
(several centuries, probably) that the nut has the good stuff in it. So they
dispensed with the fruit and found methods to roast the nut and made a very strong drink. There seem
to be two types; Robusta and Arabica. Legend has it that it was shipped from
Mokha, a city port on the Red Sea, ergo the name "Mokha". Monks used
it in their ceremonies . Bahia = Kave = coffee.
Ethiopians chewed the
beans at first but Ali Ibn Omal
Al-Shadhili, a Sufi, first brewed it and as it was the Sufi's who traveled
around brought it to the Middle East. But like tea, one could be executed if
caught exporting a seed or a seedling. Early coffee houses, called Qayveh
Kaneh appeared in Arabia but we're all closed in 1511 by Khair-Bey as they were
hothouses of insurrection.
Ethiopia was probably
home to first bush, but Yeman cultivated and processed and organized the coffee
trade. Qat, a mild narcotic, chewed like coca leaf by all the men, became more
profitable to grow, ergo the coffee trade went away.
The first coffee houses
were called Kiva Han and may be still there. The Dutch smuggled seeds out of
Yemen to their colonies in Java and Ceylon.
The French got involved
due to the King Louis XIV in 1715. He got a tree from the Dutch and set up
farms in Martinique. The story of how
it got to Brazil is better. A Brazilian Lieut. Col. Francisco de Melo
Paheta visited Martinique to mediate a dispute between the Dutch and French.
The story says he seduced the wife of the French governor as a parting gift
was sent a bouquet containing viable coffee seeds and shoots. those are the
origin of Brazilian coffee production, being in the proper climate zone.
BUYING A WIFE (An excerpt from my book "the Education
of an Architect).
BIG SUR. - Mrs Deetjin, as everyone called her, was a
mountain of a woman, so fat, she could not get out of bed. She was kind of the
local newspaper, as she knew all the gossip.
That is where I first met Henry Miller, as I knew his close friend,
Emile White. Emil lived across the
highway just a couple of feet from the road. When you stepped out his door, you
had to be careful not to be run over by a speeding car. Emile was an artist who
was completely color blind, but refused to admit it and did primitive type of
paintings with outrageous colors. He also did many sketches of Miller ( Trying
to capture his homeliness?) which actually captured his disjointed facade. Well, he and Miller had sent to
France for a couple of mail-order wives a few years previously. They (THE YOUNG
GIRLS) actually came over, lived with them for a short while, then split for
better pastures. I don't know if they ever got married, but it's probable as
that is the only reason to come over here is to get citizenship. Emil eventually
opened a gallery for Henry Miller near Nepenthe restaurant, which still exists.
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| Coaster |
NOTEWORTHY COMMENTS BY LIAN PEARS
" A corporation is a moral imbecile. It has no sense of
right or wrong, Any restraints must come
from the outside, laws and customs."
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| Brugge snack |
Unless you've been to
Belgium and.were a connoisseur of good beers, you may not have heard about
"Delirium Tremens", Voted one of the 50 great beers of the world. Why
would you choose a pink elephant for your logo and alcoholic Tremens for a name? Most of these beers use the old 1516 Beer brewing laws and ingrediants.
Anyway , trust me, it is as good as it they claim.
DO YOU FEEL INEFFECTIVE WHEN VOTING?
I do understand that
total representation of any politician to be inserted in our senate can be
disruptive, as did happen when Hitler was
established in such a mode and the dis-function of legislatures such as Italy
and Greece. But a recent columnist brought to light RANKED
-CHOICE VOTING , whatever that means. Our Two-Party system has descended in a non-compromise situation and seems totally
separate from the specter of the
"Lobbyists" who seem to be more in control than the voted-in Pols. All the hub-bub on Gerrymandering
has gotten our attention but that may have a small feed the on or voting. But maybe Proportional voting would work
better, as it does in Europe. Recently,
voters in Maine passed a referendum regarding ranked -choice voting, of course
the State Legislature had done everything to fight it but it may be on their June primary ballot. A Group. Called Fait Vote has been advocating
this system for a long time. I wish we could hear more of it.
UNISEX TOILET
I've put up a small note
on our Unisex toilet (Men & Women ):
THIS FACILITY : FOR USE OF;
GAY BOYS
LESBIANS
BI-SEXUALS
TRANS-SEXUALS
TRANS-SPECIES (Please
clean-up after yourselves).
TRANS-KARMAS
WAIT - WHAT ABOUT US FEW
HETEROSEXUALS?
ANOTHER LOOK AT THE DATE
A monk (Dionysus Exiguus)
introduced a new calendar based on the birth of Jesus Christ around 532. Up to
that time dates were named for the Roman Consul. He designated the years after
Jesus as Anno Domini., which did not catch on until after Exiguus death. A
monk, Venebale Bede, began using this calendar in his writing around the eight
century. When is someone going to start using my new system of Dates? (It begins about the time of invention of writing).
ON THE BEACH
I've just finished Daniel
Ellsberg's book aptly called DOOMSDAY MACHINE, and saw him and Peter Coyote at
the Vets' auditorium in Petaluma.
Maybe only the older
folks will remember "Deep Throat", the first whistleblower who copied
thousands of pages of Top Secret Material from the Pentagon and gave it to the
Washington Post which started a Shit-storm among our top level politicians.
That was him! He was trying to get us out of the drawn out war with Vietnam,
but his exposure of the tenuous hold our
dear leaders have on the 'Button' is exposed brilliantly. We all know that we
have literally thousands of Nuclear warhead missiles in the US and Europe,(We
do know, don't we?) as well as a
scattered all over the Pacific Ocean. You may know of the 'football' briefcase
that accompanies our president at all times, but
you may not know that it is a hoax. There are a plethora of 'buttons' that
have to be worked thru to set off any one missile, either from North
Dakota, an Air Force bomber (always in the air!) , a submarine loaded with a dozen Nukes, as well as
a bunch of silos all over Europe, all pointed at Russia and China. This book
describes how close we have come (several times) to extinguishing all life on
Earth. At which time I had to get the
Video of 1959 "ON THE BEACH" again. It is very difficult to find as most people
of the world do not seem much concerned that at any moment the and the rest of
all life will be dead in a couple of years. Even Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner
can't seem to make it popular. it seems amazing that we don't want to know any
message that tells about our certain destruction but just try to find the
video, which was done in 1959! I finally had to buy one. I think I'll try to
get the book also. If you get frustrated
trying to see a copy of the video, let me know and I will loan you mine.
