Didn't you say you regretted that you only had one life to give for your country?

I thought Nathan Hale was that guy from "the birdcage". Robin Williams little sugar. Who am I thinking of?

I think it,s Nathan Lane,but I,m tanked,so don,t hold me to it.

you're right, J. Thank you.

My name is Nathan Hale, and my exact quote was, "I regret that I was not born a cat, so that I could give my country all nine of my lives." Nathan Lane is the actor in the Birdcage. Nicholas Cage is the actor in Birdy.

Nicholas Cage has that thing. He's not superdooper babe-a-licious, but theres something about that man. Even tho City of Angels was a depressing movie at least you got to look at his eyes lots. He has beautiful eyes.

Yeah, he was pretty cool in that Vegas movie. Though I doubt he'd be anywhere if he wasn't related to Coppola.

But one must give him credit -- when he started his career after h.s./he changed his name to Cage so the Coppola influence wdn't be in his favor. I stil agreee w/Sean Penn's crack abt Cage. Even tho' it was a fucked-up thing from Penn to say to someone the day after he'd been to their hse. for a barbeque w/their family.

I'm sure people knew he was related to coppola. pretty all the hollywood stars are related to other people in the business, aren't they? and really who cares. no one pretends it's a meritocracy.

What did Sean Penn say about Nicholas Cage?

Basically/Penn publicly reamed Cage last year abt having been rewarded as an actor by getting the Oscar for a risky film like 'Leaving Las Vegas' & rather than continue making the kinds of movies that the public really celebrates/he chose to parlay his success into action-hero-franchise crap (Con Air/his deal to star in the next Superman movie, etc.) in order to get filthy rich. And I was like "Here, here! Give Sean a beer!" Then Cage spoke up some months later abt how Penn had blindswined him (my term -- not his) w/that remark. Seems that The Day Before Sean said that/he & his wife Robyn Wright were at Cage's house w/his wife Patricia Arquette & all their respective offspring/hanging out in the backyard doing the beer-&-bbq thing. And Sean was going on abt how much he loved Cage & Cage's family/blah, blah, blah. If he'd had a problem w/Cage's career choices/he certainly cd've mentioned it then. But he said nothing to Cage then dissed him to the press the next day. Which makes me think Penn must be quite a sneaky asshole. He's definitely dropped several notches on my list.

my opinion: none of these people are worth a second thought. fuck corporate entertainment. fuck celebrity gossip. i want to make a. . . um. . . you know, a big flinging thing and fling the entire entertainment industry up against something hard. like a big piece of rock or wood. then i'd rent out the flinger to anybody else who wanted to fling big, annoying things into big, hard things. carry on.

Sign me up, Dave. I could get righteous use out of one of those for a good week or so. Literary tie-in: I recommend Jim Paul's book Catapult: Harry and I build a Seige Weapon. He and his buddy do the research and slap together a ballista basically to throw huge rocks into the Pacific.

did they throw these rocks on porpoise?

nyuk nyuk nyuk. i have a lot of respect for anyone who can make a lot of money by taking money from stupid people.

musical tie-in- REM's "Catapult" on Murmur is a great song. In fact that album is my fav REM,

My wife went to high school with Cage. He had severe acne scars and underwent dermabrasion in high school.

...and wasn't Nathan Hale the skipper on Gilligan's Island?

The late Alan Hale, Jr.

If anyone cares Bob Denver lives in W.V. and smokes the wackyweed.

bob denver used to own a restaurant in tacoma, where richard brautigan, bing crosby, robert cray and i were born. bing never smoked the wackyweed.

too busy beating on his family, I guess.

exactly.

the professor lives on one of the san juan islands in washington state.

I thought Alan Hale was the Candid Camera guy.

allen funt? how do I know this. christ. why can't I know less about tv personalities and more about the hapsburgs or charlemagne?

I've got two questions for you, Cyst: 1) Do you remember facts (dates, pieces of trivia) better than events from your own life? 2) Do you remember names better than faces?

You were all born in this restaurant?

I definitely remember random textbook trivia better than events from my own life. when people tell me about things we've done together, I'm always excited to find out how the story ends. I ask them if they've seen some movie, and they say, "yeah, I saw it with you." but ask me about something really useless and arcane, like who wrote "jaws" or what the capital of canada is, and I usually have no problem remembering. I guess I don't remember faces very well. everyone sort of looks the same, have you ever noticed that? so, does this mean anything, spider?

Not really. I'm the same way and I know other people who are the same way, so I've induced that facial recognition is a part of event memory (personal memory, as opposed to semantic, or factual, memory). This may seem very obvious. On the surface facial and other visual recognition skills appear to be the same: you look at something and go into your memory to find a match. But there is evidence (Williams' Syndrome patients and other people with visual agnosia) that facial recognition is separate from other kinds of visual recognition...that they are, underneath the surface, very different in the way they play out. Lately I've been interested in finding more data suggesting the facial recognition/event memory connection...and finding people with deficits in both is (weak) evidence. I'm sure real people have really looked into this and done actual research, but the only place I know to look for that is psycINFO, the psych journal database, and I can't log in from home. Tomorrow I'll be able to, though. Yay.

who wrote jaws?

Ask the Internet Movie Database

peter benchley.(sp?) it was filmed on martha's vineyard, wasn't it. i used to go there every summer as a kid.

Capital of Canada is....OTTAWA....just in case you were wondering.

you know how in high school foreign language classes, you're supposed to pick a name in that language to go by? in high school french class I secretly wanted to be vercingetorix. but it's not a french name, anyway -- it's gallic. just in case you were wondering: Vercingetorix was a Gallic leader who led a rebellion against Julius Caesar in 54 B.C. For several years, the Celtic tribesmen who constituted his army kept Caesar at bay, defeating the famous Roman general in battle several times. Finally surrounded by Caesar's army while holed up in the hilltop fortress of Alesia in Gaul, Vercingetorix's army slowly starved as they watched Caesar build first one palisade of stakes around his refuge, then another around both himself and the Gallic army as a defense against other Gauls who came to reinforce Vercingetorix and raise the siege. Grim and singleminded of purpose, Caesar's dour Romans kept up the siege for over a year. With himself and his men facing starvation, Vercingetorix eventually surrendered. The brave old warrior was led captive back to Rome, where he rotted in a dungeon for several years. Vercingetorix was allowed to leave his dark prison to stand in the sunshine one more time, but only to walk in disgrace and chains as a foreign captive king in Caesar's triumph. After this ostentatious display of captured booty and enslaved humanity put on for the entertainment of the Roman people, Vercingetorix was ritually strangled.

Charlemagne (742-814), king of the Franks (768-814) and emperor of the Romans (800-814), who led his Frankish armies to victory over numerous other peoples and established his rule in most of western and central Europe. He was the best-known and most influential king in Europe in the Middle Ages. Habsburg, royal family of Europe, one of the most prominent dynasties from the 15th to the 20th century. With the election of Count Rudolf as the German king and Holy Roman emperor Rudolf I in 1273, the Habsburgs came into European prominence. Rudolph's territorial acquisitions in 1278, which included Austria, became the hereditary lands and center of the Habsburg domains until 1918. Allen Funt, one of television's pioneers and the man behind Candid Camera. Funt started on radio shortly after World War II with a show called Candid Microphone. In 1948, Candid Microphone moved to television and became Candid Camera. Like its radio predecessor, the show was all about capturing people's reactions to various pranks. The show is now considered a precursor of reality-genre TV shows such as Cops and World's Most Dangerous Animals.

So its Allen that freaky Funts fault Fuckit

Moonit: I LOVE YOU!!!!!

i don't get pictures in my mind. it took me a long time to realize that when people say "picture this" they mean make a picture in your mind. what does this mean, spider? i'm also a misanthrope. is this connected?

You don't get pictures in your mind? Ever? What happens when you give someone directions...how do you think about the layout of the streets? What are your memories like...if I asked you to think about the house you grew up in, what would you do? Is your misanthropy connected? I think that's a question for philosophers.

i should say i very rarely get pictures in my mind. when i was in the dorms i got a picture in my mind of some puritan looking people eating dinner around a big wooden table. a little over four years ago. it's hard to describe how my memories are. it's like a feeling of things. i have a feeling for how to get from one place to another, but no picture. if there is a landmark, i remember that the landmark is there, but not a picture of the landmark. i've yet to be able to figure out a description for what i mean by "a feeling of things". i thought i had it the other day, but it turns out people use pictures in their mind to navigate a dark room. i just have a feeling for where things are.

I bet Nate gets plenty a pictures in his head after a bong or two. Probably a bunch a PeterMax type shit. But, memory of these images are repressed by the misanthropy which is just an extension of the paranoia associated with the cannibis induced stupor. Dave's not here man. And I wouldn't trust him if he was.

naw. i've discussed this with people while baked out of my mind. it just doesn't happen. believe me. when i have a picture, i tell people.

i'm beginning to wonder what the word pictures means, if Nate says he doesn't get them. I get something, let's say it's graphical, but maybe not a full saturated technicolor 3-d thing... Maybe Nate's brain is more advanced, he doesn't need to go through the picture stage, he jumps direct to "seeing"... do you daydream, Nate? if you do, is it just radio or do you get visuals too? couple of days ago, i was taking my break, sitting on a bench in the sun, and this scene came up in my mind... i don't remember the details but it was very specific dialogue. I think it had do with my father; perhaps, negotiating with the medical people... i remember coming out of it, walking across campus close to tears, and thinking "you're doing it again," and "watch your face..." i've always done this, been able to or prone to just go off into some gripping inner scene, but I hadn't noticed having one in a long time. And I never considered it to be a symptom of anything, but perhaps everyone else did.

Very interesting. I'd like to study you. It may seem obvious (not to you, but to others) that people use and store images in their heads, but there is evidence to show that it's not pictures that are stored but....well, the only way I can think of it is like binary code. Even though we see and work with letters on the computer, the computer doesn't store letters in its memory, it uses binary code. And there's evidence that images are stored using the equivalent of a code in our heads. So it could be that you are working directly with the code and bypassing the image stage entirely. Very interesting, I say. Could you try to elaborate on the "feelings of things" even a little?

Somebody - maybe someone else remembers who - asked Einstein about his thought processes when He was working on relativity and other such shit. It was really interesting. He wasn't limited to just mental images and such, a lot of other stuff going on.

Nate, I have another question: have you ever taken or seen visual-spacial tasks on an IQ test (usually involving a stack of blocks in a particular shape, and you're asked what the blocks will look like from another angle)? How would you go about something like that? Damn. I'm getting turned on.

i don't really daydream. i do nightdream, however, and often vividly. but dreams are odd though, because i can never figure out if they were as i remember them, or they are the memories. i remember seeing things in dreams, though i don't remember what i've seen as pictures, so who knows? i also sometimes see things, but outside the 'mind'. for all purposes personal, real things that do not exist: seen through the eyes yet imagined. feelings of things: i can try? if you close your eyes and move your palm towards and object, is there a point where you can tell you're getting near the object yet you haven't touched it yet? you know the object is there because the air feels different (or something.) it is similar to that, but more global. when i am standing in a dark room, i have a feeling of where everything is. like an understanding. i understand the room. this isn't to say i have this superpsionic ability to move through dark rooms. it isn't that i'm feeling the features of the room by using my alien brain to analyze the sub-visual eminations of matter. how do blind people explain their thoughts? i know that blind people can maneuver around a room without running into things (if they know the room, obviously.)

"have you ever taken or seen visual-spacial tasks on an IQ test (usually involving a stack of blocks in a particular shape, and you're asked what the blocks will look like from another angle)? How would you go about something like that? " i'm afraid those kinds of things have just always been plainly obvious. like being given a ball and being asked what color the ball is. how do you go about figuring out the color?

i once took a test said that i processed things auditorially rather than visually. i don't know if this has anything to do with what nate's talking about, but tend to do problem-solving tasks or do certain kinds of writing by "feel". like the way you might experience music physically or spatially - up, down, expansive, small, crowded, overlapping, separate, hot, cold, warm, soft, hard, blah blah blah. i'm a very good visualizer, but only when i do it consciously. when i was a kid, my grandfather had a friend named john who was blind. i can remember that the way he described thing really fascinated me. you could really get a sense of how he perceived his room as precise shapes and distances. he would also talk about the way a day smells or tastes. he was probably the reason that, as a kid, i would close my eyes in a roomful of people or just out in a field or wherever and just "experience" all the sounds and sensations. this is also why i'm a john cage fan.

I also tend to feel stuff. I guess that doesn't really make sense, but when I map out a room in my head, I think in terms of feeling and sound, not pictures. Same thing when I dream. I rarely see images in my head. Vision kind of dazzles me, actually. It's too much information at once for me.

So Spider/is there a name for people like me/whose memories are more vivid than the present/when they choose to access them? I can't explain it as 'picturing something' -- it's fully 3-D & broader than that. I can't explain it as 'understanding' either. (Altho' I know what Nate is talking abt. For inexplicable reasons/I used to spend a lot of time as a kid wandering around the house at nite in the dark w/my eyes closed/to see if I cd go from room to room w/out bumping into stuff. Too much Helen Keller/I guess. I can still go outside/close my eyes/walk straight ahead & 'know' to stop just before I reach the curb or a car or a tree or something. It's like I can feel the object without seeing it.) Daydreaming can be dangerous for me. I can be driving somewhere & stop at a red light. And somehow the angle of the sun coming thru the roof & windows of the car will make the light fall around me in a certain way that brings back the light in Central Park under a tree along one of the footpaths when I was there resting my head & so-&-so's lap & looking up at the leaves when I was 22. And then I'm back there in that very spot. I can smell the damp grass & the spring air & the spray starch on his kakhi's. I can feel his hand in my hair. It's like... time travel. Then someone blows their horn at me becuz the light has changed & I snap back into the here-&- now. But I feel weird fora few minutes... like I'm out of synch w/everything. And these kind of persistence-or-memory/expereince warps didn't start happening to me til after I had brain a couple of years ago. I'm almost sure that has something to do w/it. Is there a name for this?

brain what rc?

Brain surgery (sorry). To remove an aneurysm that had been there who-knows-how-long. Before it burst (which might not have happened/but better safe than sorry, right?). I wrote abt it here once/I think/under Drunken Ramblings. Things were pretty gnarly afterwards. I 'lost' a lot of stuff. Cdn't remember what keys were for. Cdn't remember the names of things. Had to learn to drive all over again. Cdn't spell for shit. Lost most of my French. Had to go thru a lot of p.t. & cognitive therapy & speech therapy. But I came thru it o.k. However/I really do think it did something to my brain function in terms of old memories. Or maybe I am just too nostalgic for my own good.

wow- amazing, i hadn't read that before hardly anyone lives through a brain aneurysm, how did you find out that it was there? the brain is such a strange thing. ever read oliver sacks books? stories of people who lose some abilities and seem to gain others. it was interesting to me that i ran across his writing just as i was beginning to seriously doubt medicine, esp. psychiatry. the way that anyone 'different' is seen as 'wrong' and need to be fixed even if their not hurting anyone. especially troubling to me if these people are happy the way they are. i've heard though, that this viewpoint is changing. did you find it depressing to be 'set back'?

Actually/quite a few people live thru them now/so long as they're caught before they rupture. I read "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat." But that was long before I ever found out abt my aneurysm. It was discovered when I began having headaches & neuro problems. I was *constantly* dropping stuff for a few days. Then I'd be fine. Then I'd find myself slurring words/or saying things that made no sense. Then I'd be fine. Then I started having temporary memory lapses. Which are *Very* hard to ignore. (Or things like missing the driveway & running into the tree in front of the house. Luckily/I was driving quite slowly.) It went on for a good 6 mos. before I finally said "Shit, something's wrong w/me..." I was still living w/my parents back then/& my Mom had also noticed I was 'not quite right'. My Mom's a retired doctor/so she dragged me off to a neurologist for tests & pestered them to do a PET scan. And they found a small aneurysm. But I wdn't let a FL surgeon operate on my cat! I went to John's Hopkins for the surgery. Becuz an aunt of mine had brain surgery there years ago/performed by Dr. Ben Carson. And I wanted him to consult on my case. And since my mother is very pushy when it comes to taking advantage of the "professional courtesy" thang/he did. Which/IMO/is why I am still here & okay today. Recovering from that was the most difficult & depressing time of my life. Mainly becuz the ups-&-downs were so unpredictable. And becuz I was afraid I'd never be able to live on my own again. And becuz I know the surgery & medical bills cost my parents' a fortune. (I was uninsured at the time & even if I'd had insurance/going to Johns Hopkins wd have been out-of-network.) Funnuy you shd mention mental illness/diseases & how we shdn't 'bother' those whose illness down't cause harm to others. SO how do you feel abt things like dperession/which really only harm the self/& being being coerced into taking Lithium /etc. when therapy doesn't work? I anmnearly finished with a terrific book called: "Where The Roots Reach for Water" by Jeffrey Smith. It is the most insigntful & moving book on depression I've ever encountered. Specifically becuz it addresses society & medicine's historical perspectives on dperession. And the issue of those (like me) who don't want to medicate their emotional responses to life away. I keep wanting to send this book to Mark. But I dunno... maybe that wd be out of line.

Sorry -- that blasted link won't work from here! You can read abt him here: http://library.thinkquest.org/11646/data/carson.htm

i am a very visual person. I see things crystal. I have strange memories from childhood, usually places, specific sites in random places, outside of my home and the immediate surroundings. I have been known to have driven by a place i have not physically been by since a very young age, remember specific gas station, or a specific bridge, road, or whatever. I recalled places i hadn't ben too since I was 2 years old. A lot of the time, these scenarios, in which a visual from many many many years ago, is accompanied by a feeling, a sensation....... Example. When I was 3, I went camping with my grandparents, at a lake just north of atlanta, they had a winnebago. Well, during the week we were camping, my father was to come and visit. He only stayed for one day. I was very upset and disapointed. When we were driving home, we stopped at a rest area (my grandparents had to pee every 20 minutes!!???!!), i saw a man sitting on a bench that looked like my father, i ran, calling "daddy daddy". Jumped in his lap and proceeded to tell him stories of what I had doen camping. IT WASN"T MY DAD!!! Many years later, when i was 20 something, we drove in the same state park, i was able to point out the exact spot and stall # of the place we camped. Plus we stopped at the same rest area, the memory came back strong, and the sensation was very sad, as my dad had died about 3 months prior.......this is what i mean, the visual stirred a memory, the memory was associated with a feeling, hence the combination. I would suspect the sense is the same as nate has descirbed it.

my friends wrote the questions for trivia last night. that was probably an unfair advantage for me. I played solo and came in third. I remembered: - the names of the four components of dna - which greek mythological character had to keep pushing a rock up a hill - who wrote "the little prince" - the four essential ingredients for making beer - the definition and an example of onomatopoeia or however the fuck that's spelled - where copernicus was born I did not know: - whom the song "wish you were here" was written for - where the world's only freshwater seals live - what was celebrated at the original oktoberfest now I'm working on my own set of questions. (adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine) (sisyphus) (antoine de st. exupery) (water, hops, yeast, barley) (word that sounds like its definition, e.g. "buzz") (warsaw) (syd barrett) (lake bakai) (marriage of ludwig II, I think)

didn't know lake bakai, warsaw, and ludwig ii. cyst: you didn't know syd barrett? what, did you blank? good trivia question: what husker du song is written by one person and sung by another (there's only one, written by bob and sung by grant, but i may have inverted it...). here's a hint: it's off zen arcade.

(water, hops, yeast, barley) this is arguably incorrect. clarifying the question could change that, though.

Didn't know the Little Prince or Wish You Were Here. Lake Baikal is easily the deepest freshwater body in the world, if the word fresh can be applied to decades of Soviet pollution. It contains a whopping 20% of the world's unfrozen surface freshwater, and is an incredibly diverse ecosystem. Ludwig I of Bavaria, while Crown Prince, married Princess Therese of some little principality in October 1810. The festivities were held on an open piece of ground in Munich, subsequently named the Theresienwiese (Therese's Field), which in the Bavarian dialect is shorted simply to die Wies'n. Oktoberfest became an annual deal on the same site, for two weeks ending on the first Sunday in October. I was living in Munich during the Fest; it was one of the most incredible parties I've ever been to. But almost unknown outside of Bayern is the Starkbierfest (Strong beer festival) in the spring. Supposedly the monks after whom Munich is named fasted during Lent, and to keep their strength up, brewed the beer extra strong. I dunno, doesn't make much sense to me, but the tradition makes for one hell of a party. The beer is around 8-9%, and in only available by the liter. It's held in a permanent beer hall holding about five thousand. I'd heard horror stories about the Doppelbock (Bock is goat, as in kicks your ass). I went there with a German friend, and after three liters, we were sneering at the stuff. No effect whatsoever. I've got a freakishly high tolerance for foreign substances, including alcohol, but I was expecting more after all the stories. I ordered a fourth, got half through it, and then glanced around and it was three hours later and I was in the Irish pub across town where I was a bartender, sipping a Guinness and telling some outrageous story. I have only the vaguest of ideas how I got there. The four listed ingredients for beer are those permitted by the Bavarian Reinheitsgebot of 1516, the first consumer protection law. It has remained the law of a united Germany, but after a French brewer sued in the European Court of Justice in 1997, Germany was forced to allow the importation of noncompliant beers. Here's some starters for you: Who won the French and Indian War? What do the initials ISDN stand for? What is the period of Halley's comet? What was John Wayne's real name? Define indefatigable and use it three times in a sentence. Spell isthmus. Who was Cuauhtemoc the last ruler of? What are the two isotopes of hydrogen? How much ground could a groudhog hog, if a groundhog could hog ground?

"The four listed ingredients for beer are those permitted by the Bavarian Reinheitsgebot of 1516, the first consumer protection law. It has remained the law of a united Germany, but after a French brewer sued in the European Court of Justice in 1997, Germany was forced to allow the importation of noncompliant beers." that's what i was getting at.

Even there, you gotta watch out. Article 2 of the modern version of the code allows for sugar in top-fermented beers, for some reason. Of course, if they know that, just concede the game to them.

ok, off the top of my head, with no cheating 1. French, i think 2.? 3. 81 years 4.William Wayne 5. ability to be avoid being exhausted, and no I don't want to. 6.uhhhhhh? is this a trick question? 7. i dunno, the Aztecs? 8. I hated chemistry and retained little from it, plus it was a class I had on Friday mornings at 8 am. In college, I was convinced the weekend started on Thursdays.

john wayne had a lady's name. in the french indian war, the french and indians were on the same side, eh? H? H2? honky? hazbeen?

the british won the last of the four french and indian wars at the battle of quebec. treaty of paris like a motherfucker.

John Wayne,s real name was Marion Morrison

well that was my first thought too, re: the French Indian war but I was hesitant because i was unsure of the degree of the role in which the British played.

John Wayne's name was Marion

Morrison eh? Maybe we are related

isn't that just like a canadian.

Canadian?? Marion Robert Morrison a.k.a. Marion Michael Morrison a.k.a. John Wayne a.k.a. Duke was born in Winterset, IOWA in 1907.

holy shit, i have old school relatives in Iowa, from that side too...DAMN!

we were still colonies during the french and indian wars - so it was a british war with france over territory. both sides had native american allies. the cycle of halley's comet is 77 years. 1. sorabjites are indefatigable in their pursuit of obscure and trivial information. 2. "you indefatigable sex machine, you." 3. when igable asked benny whether he should cook the potato slices in the boiling water or the deep fat fryer, benny answered: "in de fat, igable."

fats funny

Three points for the Godfather of the Blues. The bluesmen are kicking ass in trivia today.

not that the duke was canadian. that was more of a comment of you pointing out the duke's real name after it had already been stated by a genuine citizen of the USA.

It,s o.kay Maples is in the process of adopting me,he told me to call him daddy.

I thought Halley's comet had a 76-year cycle. Cuauhtemoc: the Maya?

Cuauhtemoc Gómez, Latin American Bantamweight boxing champion.

Cuahtemoc -last Aztec emperor, executed by Cortez for treason 1525.

margret - I don't know ANYTHING about pink floyd. and not much about husker du. the only song I can think of off that album is the one that goes "never talking to you again."

I think we both wanted to answer "Marion' at the same time but my post got delayed at the border. Immigration & customs agents are still being extra careful. And J (little girl) how are we doing with that 'green card' thing?

Never talking to you again is a great tune, but the answer is "Somewhere". So, Cyst, you never went through the album oriented rock phase?

Working on the green card,but I got my passport tue.,so daddy,I can visit.I love pink floyd,at least when Roger Waters was with them,seen p.f. in concert,and Roger solo,the radio chaos tour.If you can find it, Waters has an album called the pro,s and con,s of hitch-hiking,it,s great.

i'm actually a little disillusioned that cyst doesn't know anything about pink floyd. a few months ago i read a novel called omon ra by the russian writer victor pelevin. it's a dark comedy and satire of the soviet space program. in it the cosmonauts are trained to man russia's "unmanned" space flights, and are basically sent up there to die. as omon, the main character, is nearing the moon during his mission, he has to jettison the last stage of his rocket, which contains dima - a cosmonaut whose legs had been amputated to fit in the module. he had always been distant and aloof, but their last conversation before dima is "passed on to immorality" is about their favorite pink floyd albums - ummagumma, atom heart mother, and meddle. in some ways the book reminded me of a malcom macdowell movie called "oh lucky man."

meddle is a great album. if i was a russian cosmonaut double amputee floating to my destruction, i would want "echos" on loop.

i think i would want Sysyphus Parts 1-4 on loop or perhaps Astronomy Domine. Ever heard Obscured by Clouds? Thats pretty neat album. It's actually a soundtrack but I have nerve seen the flic.

Blue Floyd is playing at the Birchmere tonight. They are billed as "a blues interpretation of the music of Pink Floyd", and include musicians from the Black Crowes, the Allman Bros. band, and Gov't Mule, with special guest Little Pink Anderson.

i just looked at blue floyd's website for some reason. oh yeah, i followed a link from sarah's project. Obscured by Clouds, yes. never seen the movie either. i'm not big on most of pink floyd. but i like meddle. the final cut. the wall.

Hmm. I like all that crap, but for me it's Animals.

The Wall, Wishe You Were Here, Animal....these latter albums don't do much for me. The early albums, with and without Barrett are outta sight. I have said this before, I think, but Piper at the gates of Dawn, to me, is one of the most influential and greatest rock and roll albums of all time.

Eric Clapton played lead guitar on The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking,my favorite song is the same as the album title.

somehow i forgot about animals. a damn fine album.

An angel on a harley Pulls across to greet a fellow rolling stone Puts his bike up on it,s stand Leans back and then extends A scared and greasy hand...he said How ya doin bro?...where ya been?...where ya goin? Then he takes your hand In some California handshake And breaks the bone Have a nice day A housewife from Encino Whose husband's on a golf course With his book of rules Breaks and makes a 'U' and idles back To take a second look at you You flex your rod Fish take the hook Sweet vodka and tobacco on her breath Another number in your little black book These are the pros and cons of hitch hiking These are the pros and cons of hitch hiking Oh babe I must be dreaming I'm standing on the leading edge The Eastern seaboard spread before my eyes "Jump" says Yoko Ono "I,m too scared and too good looking"I cried "Go on",she says "Why don,t you give it a try"? "Why prolong the agony all men must die" Do you remember Dick Tracy? Do you remember Shane? And mother wants you Could you see him selling tickets Where the buzzard circles over Shane The body on the plain Do you understand the music Yoko Or was it all in vain? Shane The bitch said something mystical "Herro" So I stepped back on the kerb again These are the pros and cons of hitch hiking These are the pros and cons of hitch hiking Oh babe,I must be dreaming again These are the pros and cons of hitch hiking

Hmmmm-----those damn question marks are back.

czarina, just hit reload, they go away. It's just an anomoly, they don't mean anything.

But they made me feel so "special".Anomalies can be your friend.

Czarina,we talked about those ???,you didn,t think they were friendly,and neither did I,but then again I,ve never seen them.

I reiterate,I feel so "special".

I saw themonce, but they were under Patrick's name, so I just thought he posted 'em as a commentary on other people's experiences with ????????????????????????????????????????? I will admit to not being turned on by Pink Floyd. I just never could get into them. I do like Voivod's covers of Pink Floyd, though.

Wow. Whatthefuck.com is officially open for e-mail address business. I am such a sheep. Maybe Lucy was right.

See,you're "special",too.Loved your potty shot.

MapleLeaf was right,sorabji does look different from a computer,hot damn I,m feeling pretty speacial too!!!J,s very happy!!J can,t work the delete button yet

You got it?I'll call you tonight,I've got a basketball game tonight and I'm coaching,so I'll call when I get back.

Looking forward to hearing from you Czarina,Margret,I went to that what the fuck sight,wtf?

I went to high school in the '80s and listened to crappy synth pop. toward the end I learned about the beatles, the rolling stones, the doors and the velvet underground. but if you wanted to go further and listen to pink floyd and led zeppelin, you had to smoke marlboros and wear black t-shirts. I didn't. I went to college fall 1989, and one friday in january 1990 I realized that I should follow all the cool guys I had crushes on to the tad and nirvana show on campus. after that, subpop and sst claimed all my cd dollars. now I'm a miserable old wretch and that "brick in the wall" stuff seems naive and jejune. but I've never listened to the whole of any of their albums, so maybe I'm wrong. now I'm in a severe ella fizgerald/artie shaw/duke ellington/louis armstrong phase, which is fine.

i think my pink floyd introduction came in my senior year of hs, my close friend had Umma Gumma and we would smoke a bunch of pot, and listen to that. Then I started seeking their other crap. Then when I worked at the record store, someone brought in a bunch of records that we couldn't buy for the store and she told us to just pitch them in the trash. Naturally, we divied them up and most of my co-workers were older audiophiles who already had their shit memorized, so I think I scored almost the whole Pink Floyd collection in one swoop. I don't have Meddle or Saucer Full of Secrets, i have heard bits and pieces and I know for fact Meddle kicks ass, but as far as the others, like Darkside of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, The Wall and Animals.....they paled in comparison to what I was already turned on to. I think perhaps that has a lot to do with someone's impression of a particular band. Their most bizarre album was my first real exposure....so perhaps when hearing more of their refined, mainstream stuff as time went on, left me hungry.

one night during that summer between high school and college I really wished I knew more about LED ZEPPELIN. this was when I thought I would never find a boyfriend. but I had a huge, insane crush on this guy in my evening community college astronomy class. the teacher told us about an open house at an observatory in the mountains. I was constantly eavesdropping on him and his buddy, and they said they were going to go! so I had to go. dark, starry sky. nothing to do but gaze at the heavens, drink coolers and maybe KISS A CUTE BOY. god, I was so dumb. like DUH. if you want to get to know a cute boy (who will be with his decidedly not cute friend), do NOT bring your older-and-more-experienced, blond, flirtatious, boy-crazy, unattached chick friend. but I thought, ok, she KNOWS I like him. she knows that's half the reason why we're going. I can't believe I was so naive. I'd spent all summer mooning over this stupid boy who had never even spoken to me, and so when I saw him out at the mountain, and he said hi and seemed glad to see me (and my friend), I was SO HAPPY. he said he and his pal were going to go back into town to get some beer but they'd be back. "isn't he CUTE?!?!?!?! I'm so glad they came! I'm so glad we came! this is going to be so fun!" we looked through all the big scopes and listened to lectures on nebulae and all sorts of boring ass stuff before we could get to the matter at hand, sitting around a campfire with this boy I liked. anyway, I was sort of shy and didn't know what to say, but she did. the only thing I remember about that conversation is that they talked about LED ZEPPELIN for fucking ever. and I didn't know anything about them. later on she went off with him and I sat by myself in the car and cried and cried and cried until dawn. I didn't speak to her the whole four-hour drive back, I just cried some more. ... I wrote her a 12-page letter explaining exactly why I hated her guts (because she, who could get any guy, had to take the only one I liked). another friend of mine ended up becoming friends with him years later, and at some party a couple months ago gave him the url to my web page. I got email from him saying he was married, he liked my photos, and he was sorry for choosing her ("it was dark").

atom heart mother wish you were here

Cyst, check out Louis Jordan and Louis Prima. And of course, you can't go wrong with Louis Armstrong. But don't forget Lady Day.

and bessie smith. that's what i'm listening to right now. gimme a pigfoot and a bottle o' beer send me 'cause i don't care slay me 'cause i don't care gimme a reefer and a gang o' gin send me 'cause i'm in my sin slay me 'cause i'm full of gin sometimes i get on 20's jazz jags and pull out my louis armstrong hot fives, king oliver, jelly roll morton, etc. and drinks lotsa whiskey.

You got whiskey, you're wantin' some Leadbelly.

whiskey and leadbelly are for when i've got them bourgeois blues.

i think that lyric is "lay me" isn't it? let's not Bowdlerize Bessie

nobody bowdlerized. it's "slay".

friday night I did x for the first time and from time to time felt a keen sense of regret. after telling my friends that I knew why some people want to go to the hospital after they take these crazy drugs, I said, "what I really want to do is bury my face in the couch." "I know so many guys who would kill to hear you say that," one of them said. I think I know who it was, but I wasn't sure because my face was buried in the couch. "what do you regret?" the one who I think said the other thing asked me. but I couldn't tell him about these things. regret is a private emotion for me. what I wish I had done differently. what I wish I hadn't done at all. many of the others I can publicize -- contempt, loathing, pity, even fear. and with this drug's help, it was easy to express my love and admiration for my friends. "it's like truth serum," my friend said. "I couldn't lie right now." I was excited to be able to tell my dear friends how great they were. you can't usually just go around telling people what you think. "s, you are so beautiful. my friends are all in love with you, and I don't even mind. c, I love the time we've spent together and I'm so glad we've become friends." and my rock star friend. I've always wondered what he really thinks about me and if he has any idea how much I admire him. we listened to his new album and I told him what I thought about it, but I withheld all the jabs with which I usually spike my comments to him. "I love this so much that if I heard it on the radio, I would go out and buy it. and I never buy anything I hear on the radio, I haven't for YEARS." and I totally meant it. but later on, as the drug wore off, I compulsively half-insulted him. I admire him so much (more than anyone else I know), that somehow I think I should vocalize any faults I can imagine. "you know, on this new album, none of the songs seem self-indulgent." I guess I can't not be mean, which, after regret, was my theme for the evening. why I have to be so fucking mean all the time. but he was nice to me. I asked him if he ever imagined himself as a woman, what sort of woman would he want to be? "you know, it's funny you should ask. because I've thought about that a lot." "yeah? and?" "well, I don't know if I should say this, but, actually, I've thought that I would want to be like you." this kills me. everything we said was sincere. he'd told me about the drug and said that even the next day, nothing ever seemed phony. it wasn't. "I think you are the most self-assured person I have ever met. you always seem above the fray. there's fearlessness in the things you do. and I've always felt like inside you, the wheels are always turning." I loved the heartfelt praise exchange. I wish I could keep that part of the drug with me. but the early parts were very hard. at one point I felt like my skin was on fire. I had to go outside. "don't sit on the ledge!" she said, just as I realized it would be a very bad idea to sit on the ledge. two of my friends wanted to go out, and my rock star friend (he says he hates that, "rock star") said he absolutely could not go out. I didn't say anything because I couldn't decide. but when the taxi came, I knew I could not face that weird world. my friend said the same. the other two were very disappointed, but they were good and caring and said it was ok to stay. I didn't like the way my vision stuttered and I didn't like that I was clenching and occasionally clacking my teeth together. I told them that I was clenching my teeth, and I was very surprised to hear that everyone else was too. I also had a hard time believing that our nice, friendly phases all coincided. the drug was a roller coaster ride, and I hated the scary parts, but I didn't let it freak me out. the two who wanted to go out took another half each, which I couldn't fucking believe. my girl friend went around and ran her fingers through everyone's hair. "it's ok to do this," she said. "because we're on x." around 4 a.m. I was done with the drug and I wanted to go to sleep. just then I realized that for weeks I'd been dosing myself with chamomile tea at night. first single bags, then double, then three per cup. so I could make myself want to go to sleep. (the next day I explained to a friend who sleeps in regularly, "I prefer to be awake.") but the drug wasn't done with me. I still felt it when I woke up a few hours later. the sentence that kept running through my head went: "there is a loving and caring side to my personality; it's just heavily counterweighted." I walked out to go tempt myself into normalcy with food and juice. it wasn't like the night, but it wasn't all right, either. the curly-haired boy at noah's bagels was wearing a name tag that said, "hi, my name is jake, and I'll be your server today, and yes, that is my real hair." it was weird.

oh, this is sort of funny. I forgot that the led zeppelin post was in this thread. because when I was feeling so heavy with regret that I was burying my face in the couch, I was thinking, "I really shouldn't tell the same goddamn stories over and over again on sorabji anymore." I swear to god. I felt really awful about it.

When we get sick of hearing them we will tell you Cyst:)I,m just glad you didn,t bury your face in a crotch.I use to tell myself after a paticular strange trip,that I was never going to do that shit again and I was going to start going to church again,but I was just kidding.