An x-ray showing a Buzz Lightyear action figure lodged in the anal cavity. The patient explained that it got stuck when it was inserted and a button was accidentally pushed, extending out the wings.

from nzafro

(via pleatedjeans)

My brain = bunny.

His simple joy in singing this song coupled with his over-sized hat make identify strongly with this stranger.

President Obama reading “Where the Wild Things Are.”

HHhhhhilarious!

Penitentes

Under one roof

Found here

Untitled, 2011. Oil on canvas 

Justyna Kopania

Found here

Collapsing French Girl

Edward Walton Wilcox

Phrictus quinqueparitus by Geoff Gallice

"This is the threat to our lives. We all face it. We all operate in our society in relation to a system. Now is the system going to eat you up and relieve you of your humanity or are you going to be able to use the system to human purposes? … If the person doesn’t listen to the demands of his own spiritual and heart life and insists on a certain program, you’re going to have a schizophrenic crack-up. The person has put himself off center. He has aligned himself with a programmatic life and it’s not the one the body’s interested in at all. And the world’s full of people who have stopped listening to themselves."

— Joseph Campbell

5 Causes of Suffering: Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

Ignorance of who we really are (we are beings of unconditional love and bliss, but we forget that)
Egoism: Our ego fools us into thinking that our labels/title in life define who we are: Intellect, Business Exec., Lawyer, Teacher, Mother, Daughter, etc. We develop programs which have nothing at all to do with who we really are but are merely what we do. Who we are is a much more esoteric force and is often buried deep inside the body we live in and which we observe.
Attachment: This is our need to cling to what brings us pleasure. When we attach our happiness to having a person or a thing and that disappears, what follows is great suffering. Learn to let go.
Resistance of what we do not want. This is the same as denial. We create all forms of ways to avoid both what will lead to freedom from pain because we do not want to go through the passage of looking at what we might not want to deal with.
Fear of death. If this weren’t present in most of us, we wouldn’t hold on to all the reasons we work so hard to build in safety nets, both physically and emotionally.

“The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation.

For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.”

— Neil Degrasse Tyson

"Where is home? I’ve wondered where home is, and I realized, it’s not Mars or someplace like that, it’s Indianapolis when I was nine years old. I had a brother and a sister, a cat and a dog, and a mother and a father and uncles and aunts. And there’s no way I can get there again."

Kurt Vonnegut

To all that is chaotic

in you,

let there come silence.

Let there be

a calming

of the clamoring,

a stilling

of the voices that

have laid their claim

on you,

that have made their

home in you,

that go with you

even to the

holy places

but will not

let you rest,

will not let you

hear your life

with wholeness

or feel the grace

that fashioned you.

Let what distracts you

cease.

Let what divides you

cease.

Let there come an end

to what diminishes

and demeans,

and let depart

all that keeps you

in its cage.

Let there be

an opening

into the quiet

that lies beneath

the chaos,

where you find

the peace

you did not think

possible

and see what shimmers

within the storm.

—John O’Donohue

from To Bless the Space Between Us

“Hope thou not much, and fear thou not at all.”

A poet of some notoriety, Algernon Charles Swinburne kept society and his critics inflamed. “An unclean fiery imp from the pit” said one of Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads (1865) - a book considered to be "unclean for the sake of uncleaness." Thought of as bawdy and anti-Christian, the book was viciously attacked in the press. Swinburne came close to criminal prosecution.

Many critics could still recognize his lyrical ability and mastery of many different forms of poetry.

The “libidinous laureate of a pack of satyrs” was a son of the English aristocracy. A small man, he made up for his lack of height with a mane of ill controlled red hair.

As a poet and critic, he became enmeshed in the Pre-Raphaelite movement via his association with the Rossettis (Swinburne dines with Lizzie Siddal and Rossetti on the evening before she died), William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones in the late 1850s(whom he met at Eton and Oxford) .

His beatings with a birch branch would lead to an obsessive love of erotic spanking and a group of poems known as the “birching poems.”

Oscar Wilde said of him: “It has been said of him, and with truth, that he is a master of language, but with still greater truth it may be said that language is his master…. Words seem to dominate him. Alliteration tyrannizes over him. Mere sound often becomes his lord. He is so eloquent that whatever he touches becomes unreal.”

Juan Manuel Castro Prieto, Jeune fille Surma, Éthiopie, 2005

from Uncertain Times

Image unknown, stork in train car

The Floor Scrapers
Gustave Caillebotte
(1875)

He did not pay attention to the discomfort of his arse. For he knew people were looking. And if they were looking, he must give face.



From 

“Be wet
with a decent happiness.”
— Robert Creeley from “The Rain”

Living on Wheels

Fiscally quite screwed, I'd often said I'd end up living in the back up of my pick-up truck. No van down by the river for me!


Deciding to see how viable that really was, I discovered that many people already are living that way. Many families already are. Some in major cities.

Most convert the truck with camper kits or self-made campers you can get plans for or you can come up with your own. This certainly increases the amount of room and, in my case, the amount of books I could have with me.

But some manage with tents, retreating to the cab of the truck when the weather become untenable. Thought I'd say "untentable," didn't you?

The advantages of moving south when it's cold may sway  those who have to learn to live with a lot less.

And moving on to where the dumpster diving brings glory and food for the table. A redolent night for all. Kick back from the wheel well and you are at your ease.

How can anyone live in that small a space? There are some ways of expanding it.

This gentleman's idea is brilliant as well as aesthetically pleasing. Plans here.

And there is a walk-in door truck cap that provides easy access to your on wheels abode.

It can be amended to include a tent that doubles your living space in whatever place your are currently calling home.

Problematic are:

1. Most cities/states have laws against living in your vehicle. Perhaps this will change as more and more people lose their homes. For many, paying rent and trying to pay down debt (student loan/credit cards) is overwhelming. I've little doubt that homelessness will be a growing issue in the years to come.

2. Where do you do your doo doo?  If you build a camper onto your truck, it will be more of a matter of gray and black water disposal. Camping sites will let you dump your dump for a small fee. Otherwise, paying for overpriced java to earn you a visit to the porcelain goddess.

3. Showering. This was a sticky point for me. I like being clean. Being ridiculously filthy doing whatever one is doing is fine. But one must be clean after. There are camping sites and many truck stops have showers for rent.

4. Safety issues. Especially for women, living on the road can be a dangerous proposition. And there is no shortage of weapons to chose from as protection. Stun guns, pepper spray, etc. But laws very from state to state. 





5. Mail can be as easy as having friends collect it all for you or renting a mail box from UPS or USPS. Since most  bills can be paid online, life on the road is easier than it was years ago.

The rules of the road are covered very well here.

My survival technique.

from  pactressia

Photo by Yale Joel, 1963, LIFE magazine

You’re not sorry to go, of course. With people like us our home is where we are not.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Hello. My name is Flurd. I will be in your dreams tonight.

Andre the Giant holding a 12 oz can of beer