Stormy's Lost Boys

Poor little guy! I need to go and pick him up from the vet soon. He got his last round of shots today, and...well, he got snipped. So, he's coming home without his boys and I'm dedicating a drink to the lost boys tonight!

The Devil's Word

This thing Allegiance, as I suppose,
Is a ring fitted in the subject's nose,
Whereby that organ is kept rightly pointed,
To smell the sweetness of the Lord's anointed.


The flabby wine-skin of his brain
yeild to some pathologic strain,
And voids from its unstored abysm
The driblet of an aphorism.

"Hail, holy Ass" the quiring angels sing;
"Priest of Unreason, and of Discords King!
Great co-Creator, let Thy glory shine:
God made all else; the Mule, the Mule is thine!"

O, the Lord of Law on the Throne of Thought,
A gilded imposetor is he.
Of shreds and patches his robes are wrought,
His crown is brass,
Himself is an ass..

He was a slave: at word he went and came;
His iron collar cut him to the bone.
Then Liberty erased his owner's name,
Tightened the rivets and inscribed his own.

"This is the end," the sick man said
In faint and failing tones.
A moment later he was dead,
And Tambourine was Bones.

Intimacy, n. a relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction.



The more they said, the more they felt
Their spirits with emotion melt,
Till tears of sentiment expressed
Their feelings. Then they effervesced!
So Nature executes her feats
Of wrath on friends and sympathetes
The good old rule who won't apply,

That you are you and I am I.



The Devil's Dictionary, Morris, 1999.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Tidy, happy birthday to you!!!

Congrats for 31 years!!!



that's all for now, very, very busy..will be back one day soon:)

baseball

Well, I'm heading to a baseball game soon, the Redbirds! It's the local AAA team, and it's the first game I'll be at this season. Unfortunately, I've still got a cold, and the cough medicine I'm taking is just making my head so damn fuzzy....could stop taking it, but then I'll cough twice as much, hmmm..I should skip the game, but I've already paid for the tickets (they were cheap, only $5) and there's free food....BBQ, yummmmmmmy

I'll let you know if we win!

What?

http://www.helenair.com/articles/2006/04/13/helena/a09041306_02.txt

Computer

I'm thinking about buying a new computer...and I'm assuming that most who play with blogs are something of computer geeks..well, need some advice guys!! I really want a light weight, laptop, wireless, and small...I'm not sure where to go online to look for one, so if anyone has some advise, I would appreciate it:)

The thing is that I want to be able to drag this thing around to work on writing and presentations from the pool to the bar to lab meetings, the one I have now is killing my shoulder and is, (sorry buddy) slowing down a bit

Oh dear

What is life coming to? Has my former home town become that dangerous? I'm shaking in my booties...

Seriously, read the local briefs, it's pretty sadly written to make two events fill up an entire page by rewording the same statement over and over, each time adding another detail...wow

http://www.helenair.com/articles/2006/04/12/helena/a09041206_05.txt

Here's to Hershey

Well, my younger brother bought a dog last year. He specifically looked for a dog that could run all day (brother's a runner) hike, camp, etc.. He found one! A big, lean chocolate dog who never stopped! Ben took the Hershey running everyday, up to the mountains. Well, the dog ran after a bird the other day, out onto a road and was hit by a semi. Ben blames himself, and maybe he could've trained the dog better to listen to him, but really, it's not his fault, it's just really, really bad luck. So Ben and his friend buried the poor guy out there in the mountains. I can't imagine what went through him to see that. My brother has never seen an animal, or rather a pet, die before. He always refused to be there when our animals needed to be put down..I always went, never wanting our little furry family members to be alone. Granted Ben is older now, but he's a true gentle soul and I know he's hurting right now. That dog has been his best friend through the end of school, the beginning of one job and the next. Hershey was absolutely in love with Ben, as faithful as they come, slept at his feet (with his stuffed animal, a moose), went on every road trip, cried whenever Ben left, and tackled him to the floor in greeting. Here's to Hershey, sorry you had to go so soon, thank-you for taking care of my little brother when he needed a friend the most.

WE CAN VOTE!!!!

To anyone who cares, we can vote on the quarter design for Montana, I chose MT-4 but take a look!!!! if you want to vote you should!!! it's not a big deal to some, but for us Montanans, it's a pretty big deal:) Oh, by the way, we're the 'big sky country' state, it's our logo, for those who don't know, every state has a logo, and some are pretty stupid, ours is cool;) oooo, I should blog that, hmmm, I'm very hyper right now, too much coffee too fast!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://governor.mt.gov/hottopics/mtquarters.asp

Someday I'll write a blog on Montana, maybe soon, show some pictures...it's hard to describe...too much

Country

OK, well, I made a comment on FOUR DINNERS the other day so I thought I'd follow it up with a blog...For anyone who didn't read his blog, it was about some Islamic people in his community who were gung ho about their religion and how, FOUR DINNERS, felt that if they were to live in his country they should assimilate to that country, not change it to reflect where they came from. So, I commented partially in agreement, using the language issue here in the U.S. as a point. Others commented that English is not the native language. So, I'll go from there:

I know English is not the native language. I grew up in a state with 7 reservations (more than any state including the provinces of our neighbor, Canada) and I took enough Native American courses to nearly receive a minor on the subject. Nearly one of every three friends I have from back home either grew up on a reservation or can trace their ancestry to one or more Native American clans. I'm very passionate about the Native American cause, I believe the wrongs done over a century ago are continued by the dependence that the U.S. government forces onto the reservations. This, and the civil wars that are seen on the reservations today, will have to be another blog, I just don't have the time right now.

For the country established in 1776 with the declaration of independence known as the United States of America, English is the national, and common language. I can trace my ancestry back to 1643 when a group of Englishmen from Liverpool traveled here by boat. Later, there were Irish, and German. All of those people had to change when they came to this country. Some had to learn a new language, others had to fight prejudice.

There are certain qualities that make each country on this planet different from each other, be it religion, language, or government. What defines this nation is the common language of English, the common belief in freedom of religion, and freedom of government which is, for better or worse, a capitalistic government.

Regardless of how anyone feels about each issue, common qualities are what make a country. If you don't like those qualities, at least here, you are allowed to leave and find a country that suits you. My point really is, that we can be as multicultural as all, but if we don't hold on to at least a few key ideas such as having a common language, then we aren't a country anymore, there's no substance left, the water colors are just too diluted to be a vibrant painting anymore.

Space Giants and All

Disappointment again..I drove to Chicago on Friday with two colleagues to use the synchrotron up there at the Argonne National Laboratory, sounds impressive, doesn't it;) Which is just a giant particle accelerator, umm, well lets see, a giant machine that creates really strong x-rays. For you non-scientists, what it's doing is taking a gaseous element (think back to those days in chem) and spinning them around in a tube that is a mile long. Literally, that's all they do is spin the suckers as fast as they can until the electrons of the element jump orbitals. Then as the electron moves back to its original orbital, it gives off X-rays.

Think of it as the sun is an element, and the earth is an electron and some big giant space beast picks up the sun and flings it in a circle really hard around the galaxy, so hard in fact, that the earth moves up to where, say, Jupiter is. Then the space giant wanders off and the sun is able to slow down a bit, which allows the earth to move back to where it started, only as the earth moves back, it spews off half the population of the earth, just for fun.

Well, we use those x-rays in experiments, to diffract protein crystals (I think I have a picture of them in a former blog). Just like visible light diffracts into a rainbow when it hits a prism. Anyway, we're able to create a picture of a protein (that may be important in cancer or some other disease) from that diffraction.

So, the point of this lesson is, my crystals didn't diffract. Back to square one. So I drove for 16hrs, wasted a perfectly good Saturday, and have nothing to show for it. Ahh, the pleasures of science. It'd be more fun to be a big giant space beast.