I told Amazon I'd blog this

I wrote a letter to Amazon.com via the Humane Society's campaign to get them to stop selling cockfighting magazines and dogfighting videos!! This is utter crap. Barnes & Noble and other online sellers don't sell this stuff, and nobody should be selling it.

Humane Society: "Amazon claims that its commercial sale of these publications is protected by the First Amendment. But the First Amendment does not protect companies advertising illegal contraband, and that's exactly what the magazines sold by Amazon are doing."

Want to let them know what you think? Here's a link to get you started.

Rove admits to committing a felony

The South Austin Jug Band have a fun newsletter, and today they offered 2 guest passes to answer the trivia question:

What felony did Michael Moore point out that Karl Rove had committed involving him (Moore)?

OK, I didn't know that one so I had to look it up. Old news for all you Late Night watchers, but here it goes.

Hello. FBI? We have a problem.

Did I say unicorn? I meant ox.

[Link to Creation Museum]

[Link to Unicorn Museum]

This is a parody site of the Creation Museum site. Here's their premise:

Based on the idea of ‘if it’s in the Bible, it must be true’, The Unicorn Museum promotes belief in the Biblical Truth of unicorns, a creature mentioned nine times in the KJV Bible.

Sounds fair, doesn't it? I love that rear-view they've used. Nice statement.

Here's a Christian site trying to explain what the Bible really meant when it mentions unicorns... or yeah, and satyrs too.

There's a lot of magical stuff in the Bible, whether miracles, curses or plagues. Why do they even bother trying to explain how the translation turned the original intent into what's there now (depending on version)? Why not just say the creatures existed and the dinosaurs aboard the ark had them for dinner or some other preposterous story?

And where are the centaurs! What about merpeople? Sphinxes? Dragons?

found via J-walk

Tags: Unicorn - creationism - museum

Soul - What It Is!

What do you think about "soul"? It means a lot of things to a lot of people, and it gets confusing trying to talk about soul, or the soul, because of all the different concepts and beliefs. Do I have soul? Yes, I think so. Do I have a soul? Am I a soul? Yes, no or maybe.

Here's a snippet from the dictionary:

Main Entry: soul
Function: noun

1: the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life

2a: the spiritual principle embodied in human beings, all rational and spiritual beings, or the universe
b: capitalized, Christian Science: GOD 1b

3: a person's total self

4a: an active or essential part
b: a moving spirit: LEADER

5a: the moral and emotional nature of human beings
b: the quality that arouses emotion and sentiment
c: spiritual or moral force: FERVOR (syn: passion)

6: PERSON [not a soul in sight]

7: PERSONIFICATION [she is the soul of integrity]

8a: a strong positive feeling (as of intense sensitivity and emotional fervor) conveyed especially by black American performers
[...]

If you've "got a lot of soul", that usage of it fits in with #4, #5 and #8. Not just the average amount of fervor, spirit; not cowering in the corner, afraid to speak up, to extend a hand, sing out loud, bang on a cowbell, call it as you see it, dance like a fool... a full cup and maybe a bit over the top. It's not from being educated, or even just smart, it comes from the emotional part of you -- what you might call "the heart" -- where you decide for yourself what's right and wrong.

#3 and #6 seem almost the same. A soul is a person, a living person. Most people seem to use the word this way. Old King Cole was a merry old soul...

It's #1 and #2 where most of the debate comes in. Is there a "soul" inside you, something that IS you (like #3) but is not really part of your body and can live AS YOU without your body? There's a whole field of study about astral projection and out-of-body experiences. Now, I don't know how this works, but I've actually had a limited OOBE once while getting anesthesia pre-surgery. There's something to it. I don't believe in the concept of the supernatural, so whatever makes this possible, it's something weird about our personal electrical impulses that can take into a realm where things are just plain unexplained. Can you live, after the death of your body? There are people who have died briefly and come back, and have experienced a whole lot of very odd things that can't be explained, and unless you yourself have been brought back from the brink of death or beyond I don't see how you can make judgements about what other people have been through. It's hard enough to make judgements about your own experiences. Interesting stuff.

Calling it proof of having an immortal soul is a huge leap though. It's not proof of anything. If person A has seen a space alien and person B has seen an angel, or a demon, or the Blessed Virgin in a pancake, or Elvis alive and well, does that count as proof? Let's leave it as "interesting".

Our family were Jehovah's Witness for a few years, and I learned about a lot of alternate mythology there, and I have believed various things like that in my life before I became a skeptic and a non-believer. They believe that the soul resides in the blood, and they base it on these bible scriptures:

Genesis 9:4 - "Only Flesh with its soul - its blood - you must not eat"
Leviticus 7:26 - And you must not eat any blood in any place where you dwell"
Leviticus 17:11 "the soul of the flesh is in the blood"
Leviticus 17:14 "The Soul of flesh is its blood"

That why they won't donate blood or take tranfusions, in case you always wondered about that. Well, being a vegetarian, I'm pretty much 100% off eating blood these days. Doesn't sound good. Doesn't look good. Blah. Are animals "souls"? Are they "persons"? No worries about eating souls here.

Will I live forever? As Joni said, ...we are stardust... I am composed of a lot of things, not only my personality, what people think of me and what they will remember about me -- but there's a strictly physical part that will break down and live forever whether as DNA (some of you have passed yours along, I chose not to) or just chemicals. You really only die when you are forgotten. That is my feeling.

Image by David Ho.

Tags: soul

First Thursday in August

Here's a wrinkly shot of my new Mother Truckers tee. I am ashamed to say that I have not seen this band in almost a year, not since my birthday last August. Always meaning to get out to the the Happy Hours in town, but it's been hard to do with the sick kitties. The MTs play a regular Thursday night gig at the Continental Club, a prime Happy Hour in this town (Happy Hour is from about 6:30 to about 9:00). A year ago I was trying to see them as often as possible. I even showed up at 8:00 in the morning to see them at a benefit once! They didn't have a big following then, mostly some people who had heard them on KGSR and liked them. Their Happy Hour was not crowded back then but had enough late-comers to make it cozy. I knew they'd get their little family of loyal fans and street teamers gathered around in time, and that has certainly happened. I changed into my shirt at break, and everybody was "alright!!! got your shirt on!!!" Here's Teal and Josh, not a great pic, sorry.

The Thursday Happy Hour just happened to coincide with First Thursday on SoCo, so a lot of stuff going on up and down the street. There was a Capoeira circle, called a "roda", going on in the parking lot of a dry cleaner. Looks like a lot of fun and very good exercise and discipline, also looks like it tones up the muscles pretty good. Gary Primich and Mike Keller were not playing at Jo's Coffee this time as they usually are. Most of the time we sit and listen to them play Chicago blues and people-watch (but there was no live music there this time). Funniest thing we saw was a woman carrying a pug dog like a baby in one of those front harnasses with his feeties pointed forward. Little bundle o' joy! Cute! That was about it for First Thursday for us.

Catblogging - Sheepy

Henry's counting sheep in a fleecy bed. I think he may have gotten as high as... 2.
...on closer examination, maybe 3.

Aaaah!! Endless summer!!


Tags and links: Friday Ark - Carnival of the Cats - This week's carnival is at Momma Grace & Company - Cats - Catblogging

I must BE the blue pyramid!

You're Egypt!
Curator of ancient mystical secrets, your life on the surface is fairly typical these days. Though you are in denial about more things than most people. Nevertheless, you're trying to convince people that you're safe despite your more volatile and unstable times that seem to be behind you. You like cats a whole lot. You'd probably really appreciate The Blue Pyramid.

Take the Country Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid


Quiz found via Kay

The China syndrome and other rants

I slacked off “work” work last night (not to mention missing that tasty Happy Hour at the Continental Club with David Grissom and Warren Hood) to assemble a couple of nifty new chairs we got at Target. My home office chair has been killing my legs (seat too high for my hobbitty frame) so I needed to find something lower to the ground. This chair is that, plus it swivels beautifully (wheeeee!!!). The first thing I do after opening a booklet like this is to get some nice background distraction going on the tube; preferably a vintage gem like this one. One comment on AMC is this: I thought they showed stuff uncut. They don’t. This one, “Easy Rider” included female nudity related to sexual activity, but didn’t show the bird-flipping near the end (and both are important to the plot). Boobs and butts can be shown but not a finger? Wha??

So my work was laid out in front of me. Two chairs to assemble that looked like this after sweeping up lots of Styrofoam. Only $68 for each one, on sale until Saturday. Of course they are made in China. The sad part is that I doubt I could afford them if they were made here. It’s a broken system, for sure. An unbelievable number of things are not made here, including a high percentage of American flags!!! Apparently, the number of imported flags shot waaaay up after 9/11 due to demand. How ironic is that? I also bought underwear, some of which was made by the company Hanes, which identifies itself with the tagline “An American Original”. The imprint says they were made in El Salvador. I guess Central America technically is “America” so their butts would be covered by that (and thankfully, mine is too). The other brand was Gilligan O'Malley, which was made in Malaysia. I wonder if the CEO’s money even goes into an American bank?

Well, one thing that is definitely not made in China is this excellent Texas beer, Firemen’s #4 made by the microbrewer Real Ale. mmmm. A necessary ingredient anytime your evening can be described as "Assembly Required".

Tags: China - Target - Easy Rider

I'm going to freak right out*

Brace yourself before clicking this. It's a real-life horror movie.


*quote: Agent Sands (Johnny Depp's character) in "Once Upon a Time In Mexico"

Hail Me a Cab

I believe that I may have been whacked upside the head by this band. Death Cab For Cutie. I've had the following song stuck in my head for 2 days now. It gets airplay locally (on the Indie-oriented stations), and for all I know it's the biggest hit song in the world. You see, I don't listen to Clear Channel or any top 40 radio or watch VH1/MTV, so I'm a little out of it (and not sorry, I just have other ways of being exposed to music).

Here, take a listen: I Will Follow You Into the Dark

(filmmaker's commentary)

So in browsing for more like that, I came across this gem that I've heard quite a bit, but can't tell you exactly where. It's just very familiar. It's a real beauty. The band's music is very melodic, haunting, and sweet sounding. The singing is great. Now I've got THIS one stuck in my head. Soul Meets Body



Both of these songs are fairly old (a year or two?). I don't even own any of their music and don't know much about them. Not yet anyway. Looks like there's a lot to choose from in the "bins".

Links:
Official YouTube DCFC channel
Website
MySpace
YouTube DCFC search

Tags:
Music - Death Cab For Cutie

aaaaaaaah!

It was a very nice Saturday evening over at Central Market where the Tea Merchants were playing. They are a 3-man band playing traditional Irish and Celtic music, or as they describe themselves on MySpace: "High-Energy TexaGaragIrish Trad! YeeHaw!!!". They play a combination of old trad songs and their own compositions, very good stuff. You have to go to the link and listen to Led Zeppelin Polkas.

That Central Market (on N. Lamar) is a good place for music. It's a big health food grocery (that I personally prefer over Whole Foods) and you can buy your dinner either from the restaurant inside, or in the store itself, including libations, and enjoy them on the large patio that adjoins a playground and a park. It's definitely a family venue, lots and lots of kids, dogs too, and grackles of course. We enjoyed a bottle of wine, a couple of good German beers, a baguette, hummus, wonderful olives and salad bar, while zoning out on music that seems to live more in my blood than in my head. I surely do love it.

The weather was beautiful too. No rain, and unseasonably cool for August (we are talking 90s, not 100s), with a nice breeze blowing as the sun set. Watching the kids dancing is always something that will make you smile.

Tea Merchants:
MySpace
Website

Tags: Music - Austin - Texas - Texas Music

Catblogging - Got Socks? Anyone?

Jax says "I am allowed to put my feet in your face, because mine are fuzzy and cute, but who gave permission for this? I am trying to look dignified, but believe me... you are making it very difficult!"

Tags and links: Friday Ark - Carnival of the Cats - This week's carnival is at Life From a Cat's Perspective - Cats - Catblogging

Separated at birth?

Maybe just cousins?