2011?

Epsom 2006

Mike Lawless. welcome (back) to the NW

Dan Closser. back in 2010

And then a scholar said, "Speak of Talking."
      And he answered, saying:
      You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;
      And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.
      And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.
      For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words many indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.
      There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone.
      The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape.
      And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand.
      And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words.
      In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence.
      When you meet your friend on the roadside or in the market place, let the spirit in you move your lips and direct your tongue.
      Let the voice within your voice speak to the ear of his ear;
      For his soul will keep the truth of your heart as the taste of the wine is remembered
      When the colour is forgotten and the vessel is no more. 

Kahlil Gibran

Be the river as it rolls along

Life with a federal reserve

Historic Fort Panic

If you ever travel to Michigan's Upper Peninsula and happen to stop by Marquette located on the shores of beautiful Lake Superior you may run into a local named Crabby. He's quite the character. Weather it's bikes, boards or beers Crabby's always down to shred. If you ever get the chance to visit Fort Panic you won't be let down. A true underground builder extraordinaire. (Frazier Photo)

We make BMX parts

If you need some 
email

BOWLEGGED248@aol.com

Light it up

Heard my brother tell a story about a world gone mad
People building their own cages rage at thoughts of liberation
About one girl and about one boy so lost in each other's joy
that he can only say Right On and she can only Shine On
Shine On
Meanwhile all around the people tear each other down
But the two unable to not appreciate the coming of another day
'cause with each rebirth a renewed gift of sun and earth
So right on my mother earth and shine on my sun
My Sun 
And while the world tears itself apart with its certainty
The two just sit back in the wonder and the joy
Of the last artifact we have yet to destroy
And we give THANKS

(Liberation Lyrics - Fifteen)

Content of Character

Love is on the inside!

Natural Smile

I like riding art

especially when I know the artist

and the atmosphere is natural

oregon via michigan

Ten Cent Deposit

Making Moves in the Mitten

Watch the full episode. See more Independent Lens.

Fro sent me this link

Fred On Everything

Darwin Was Right

We are descended from monkeys. There is no other explanation.

January 12, 2011

Pondering Whither America, I reflected on a story, probably apocryphal but which I am going to believe because I like it, about catching monkeys. Tribesmen somewhere craft a heavy pot with a hole in it large enough that a monkey could insert an open hand, but not withdraw a closed fist. They then put monkey food in the pot. The monkey reaches in, grabs the food and, refusing to let go when the hunters approach, is caught and eaten.
Here we have our politics in a paragraph. The American national monkey can’t let go. The party is over, boys and girls, but we aren’t going to adapt.
For example: When people recently found that they could no longer afford the SUVs, the McMansions, the buying of absurdities in a frenzy of competitive consumerism, they just put it on the credit card. The monkey can’t let go. And now they are screwed.
Same-same domestic policy. The US has played War-on-Drugs for half a century, with no results but to make drugs an integral part of the economy. The evils engendered are great. Yet the monkey can’t let go.
 It is internationally that the monkey principle really bites. The country is well on its way to being a merely regional power militarily, economically, and diplomatically. Short of a miracle, short of a conceivable but unlikely catastrophe in China, Amricans will soon be medium potatoes. There is nothing we can do about it, but we will bankrupt ourselves trying. We can’t let go.
If you look beyond the Reader’s Digest patriotism of Fox News, and the high-school cheerleading of little Sarah Palin, if you look beyond the national borders, all of this is obvious.
By Chinese standards, America is a small country, having a quarter of its population. Their economy grows at close to double digits. Yes, it may slow down, or it may not. Short of unforeseen disaster, the question is not whether but when the Chinese economy will dwarf the American economy. Tell me why this is not true.
All power springs from economic power. While America decays, plays, and sucks its thumb, China invests. Everywhere. There is nothing unprincipled in this. It is just intelligent commerce.
Do not underestimate these people of the epicanthic fold. I have lived among the Chinese, in Taiwan years ago. I liked them, and still do. I know them to be smart, disciplined, studious, practical—as well as nationalistic and very racially conscious. No, we do not think these attitudes proper. It doesn’t matter what we think.
Note that China has that perfect government, an intelligent dictatorship concerned with advancing the country. The American government consists of self-interested lobbies and Wall Street looters. China is run by engineers, America by lawyers. Watch.
The US is midway through an inexorable suicide. If a country does not manufacture things, it does not have an economy, and manufacturing has fled American shores. Ship-building, steel, consumer electronics, railroads: gone. You may think your HP laptop is an American product, but in all likelihood every component was made overseas and it was assembled in Taiwan.
The country as a whole, as always, looks inwards and doesn’t understand, doesn’t know what stirs without. Communism no longer protects America from Chinese competition.
America is the world’s greatest debtor nation, China the greatest creditor. We cannot possibly repay what we owe, so we must either default or inflate. If another choice exists, I am unaware of it. And yet the government spends, spends, spends, and borrows, borrows, borrows. No one is in charge. No one cares. All line their own pockets. Wait.
Rationally, this would seem a good time to let go of unaffordable luxuries. But no. The US continues to buy things it can’t pay for, to play roles it can no longer maintain, because it pains the national vanity no longer to be the biggest kid on the block. The monkey can’t let go.
The millstone around the American neck is the Pentagon. The direct cost alone of feeding the military contractors is almost mortal to a sinking economy: $720 billion this year, plus another $120 billion requested for the unending wars, plus huge black programs, the Veterans Administration, and so on. A trillion wilting green ones, call it. The more perceptive note the opportunity cost of wasting so much engineering talent, so much money for research and development, on martial zoom-wowees.
China, Russia, the Moslem world, Latin America and all the rest who detest the US must be enjoying the spectacle. Spend on, spend on, oh round-eyed fools….
Vanity. We do not garrison South Korea because Pyong Yang may send its troops across our common border into Arkansas. We do it because we think it our birthright to rule the world. The monkey cannot let go.
Our practical choice is between retracting the military or going down hard. But we cannot retract. Once you have made your economy dependent on huge unproductive expendititures, there is no quitting. It might seem wise for example to reduce the military rolls by the 30,000 troops in South Korea. But they would simply increase the rate of unemployment, already dangeorusly high. Since most of the military contributes nothing to the defesne of the United States, releasing all unneeded soldiers into joblessness would probably precipitate an armed rebellion.
There is worse. Towns spring up around large bases to supply the troops and their families. Close the bases, and the towns die. Closing Camp Lejeune would kill Jacksonville; Fort Bragg, Fayetteville; Fort Hood, Killeen. Further, huge companies—Lockheed-Martin, much of Boeing, and dozens of others—being unable to compete in the civilian economy, have become obligate military suppliers. Cut their big programs and you unemploy tens of thousands for whom there are no civilian jobs.
The federal bureaucracy is much the same, employing vast numbers yet producing nothing. Politicians drone about wanting “smaller government.” How? Eliminate the Departments of Education, or Housing and Urban Development, or Commerce—and where do the people go?
We can pretend that the current recession is temporary, and not a manifestation of dying opulence, just as a fading beauty can pile on the make-up and hope that men don’t notice. We can spend while others grow, buy their goods on credit—for a little while longer. The monkey can’t let go.
And any who say that we ought to put our house in order and come to terms with reality? They will be said to Hate America. Well and good, until the bill comes due.


http://www.fredoneverything.net/Graham.shtml

We begin life with the world presenting itself to us as it is. Someone—our parents, teachers, analysts—hypnotizes us to “see” the world and construe it in the “right” way. These others label the world, attach names, and give voices to the beings and events in it, so that thereafter, we cannot read the world in any other language or hear it saying other things to us. The task is to break the hypnotic spell, so that we become undeaf, unblind and multilingual, thereby letting the world speak to us in new voices and write all its possible meanings in the new book of our existence.
–Sidney Jourard

s10

Go to BNQT.com for more videos.

Control yourself

Read between the lines
Formulate your own ideas
Do not follow

Who are your heroes

"Christopher Columbus has been a genuine American hero since at least 1792 when the Society of St. Tammany in New York City first held a dinner to honor the man and his deeds." Columbus Day has been celebrated as a national holiday since 1934 in honor of this dedicated and courageous explorer. Unfortunately, his character had a dark side.

Columbus described the Arawaks -- the Native people in the West Indies -- as timid, artless, free, and generous. He rewarded them with death and slavery. For his second voyage to the Americas:

"Columbus took the title 'Admiral of the Ocean Sea' and proceeded to unleash a reign of terror unlike anything seen before or since. When he was finished, eight million Arawaks -- virtually the entire native population of Hispaniola -- had been exterminated by torture, murder, forced labor, starvation, disease and despair." ₁

A Spanish missionary, Bartolome de las Casas, described eye-witness accounts of mass murder, torture and rape. ₂ Author Barry Lopez, summarizing Las Casas' report wrote:

"One day, in front of Las Casas, the Spanish dismembered, beheaded, or raped 3000 people. 'Such inhumanities and barbarisms were committed in my sight,' he says, 'as no age can parallel....' The Spanish cut off the legs of children who ran from them. They poured people full of boiling soap. They made bets as to who, with one sweep of his sword, could cut a person in half. They loosed dogs that 'devoured an Indian like a hog, at first sight, in less than a moment.' They used nursing infants for dog food." ₃

The Spaniards eventually went on to conquer Mexico and the southern U.S.

READ ON>>>>

                                            http://www.religioustolerance.org/genocide5.htm

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;

None but ourselves can free our minds.

Have no fear for atomic energy,

'Cause none of them can stop the time.

How long shall they kill our prophets,

While we stand aside and look?

Hippy Clip

The White Lotus sent over a link to his new online store

 http://www.thehippyclip.com/

Check it out!

Life? in Toronto

If you are in Canada and looking for a little Life?

Check out 

www.joyride150.com

in Toronto 

for stems, sprockets, zines

Shout Out to KEVEN"dreadeye"

for the connection