Gilchrist Keith Diary

Tickets for the reunited Jesus And Mary Chain gigs at Webster Hall next month went on sale today, and surpisingly (to me anyway…) did not sell out instantly. Maybe the $45 price tag is a bit high, but compared to Hall & Oates at Nokia for $99.50, the feedback fest sounds like an outright steal. Get them while they last here. I’ll be at the Wednesday show, so bring enough to buy me a beer, too.

The Jesus & Mary Chain - “Taste Of Cindy” mp3 buy
The Shins - “Taste Of Cindy (Jesus & Mary Chain cover)” mp3 buy

Speaking of the JAMC, their American nephews Black Rebel Motorcycle Club have posted a video featuring a couple tracks from their new set, Baby 81, which hits streets next Tuesday:

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Tour Dates :

May
5 Tempe, AZ - Marquee Theatre *
6 San Diego, CA - House of Blues *
8 Los Angeles, CA - The Wiltern *
9 San Francisco, CA - The Filmore *
11 Portland, OR - Roseland Theatre *
13 Seattle, WA - The Showbox *
15 Boise, ID - The Big Easy ! ^ (tickets)
16 Salt Lake City, UT - In The Venue ! ^
17 Englewood, CO - Gothic Theatre ! ^ (tickets)
18 Omaha, NE - Sokol Underground ! ^
19 Lawrence, KS - Granada Theater ! ^
20 St. Louis, MO - The Pageant ! ^
22 Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue ! ^
23 Milwaukee, WI - The Rave ! ^
24 Chicago, IL - Vic Theatre !
25 Detroit, MI - St. Andrews Hall !
29 Boston, MA - Avalon !
31 New York, NY - Webster Hall ! (tickets)

June
1 Philadelphia, PA - Theatre Of The Living Arts !
2 Washington, D.C. - 9:30 Club !
4 Columbus, OH - Newport Music Hall !
5 Indianapolis, IN - The Music Mill !
6 Nashville, TN - City Hall !
7 Atlanta, GA - Roxy Theatre !
9 Fort Lauderdale, FL - Culture Room !
10 Orlando, FL - The Social !
12 Birmingham, AL - Zydeco !
13 New Orleans, LA - The Republic !
14 Houston, TX - Meridian !
15 Austin, TX - La Zona Rosa !
16 Dallas, TX - House of Blues !
17 Oklahoma City, OK - Diamond Ballroom !
19 Las Vegas, NV - University Theatre !

* = w/ The Fratellis
! = w/ The Horrors
^ = w/ Eastern Conference Champions

Dospěl jsem k názoru, že

By Nat Torkington
Tim’s been watching power for a while, as you may have noticed from his Radar posts and talks. We’re doing our first Energy Innovation Conference in August (22-24, San Francisco) and you’re invited. I’ve been helping Allison Randal from O’Reilly, Alec Proudfoot and Chris Uhlik from Google put together the program. You’re probably asking yourself “why energy?” (at least, you are now) so I thought I’d better say what value we hope to offer at the conference.

Reasons to attend

1) You Love Science. From solar concentrators and electric cars to oil-growing algae and printing photovoltaics into buildings, we’ve got all sorts of nifty science and engineering. We’re geeks at heart–we want our presenters to cough up the hard numbers on everything from $/MWh for battery technology to the economic analysis of proposed emissions trading.

2) You Love Money. Harnessed energy is what supports the Earth’s population and lifestyle. There’s huge demand and it’s only going up. There’s money to be made in meeting this demand, whether through nuclear, coal, solar, intelligent utility networks, wind or other systems. Even outside the grid, advances in generation and consumption technology such as individual power monitoring and lightweight solar cells make new consumer and enterprise devices possible.

3) You Love The Web. Popular and feature-rich web sites end up using a lot of servers. Data centers have an insatiable appetite for two things: hardware and power and the Internet now consumes 4 1.2% (updated) of the US’s electricity production. A lot of that goes to cooling and air conditioning. Advances in data center energy efficiency free money to go to better software, more hardware, and sports cars for you (well, for Jeff, Jerry, Bill, and Sergey).

4) You Want To Be The Change You Would See. You’re interested in ways you can change your house, your car, your lifestyle to save money and/or the environment. You want to know about architecture hacks, roof-mounted solar panels, and how long it’ll be before you can get 80 mpg from your pimped hybrid ride with the top down.

Status

We’ve finished about 70% of the program (up on the web site) and over the coming weeks I’ll be blogging as I finish the rest of it. Keynoters include Vinod Khosla, Dan Kammen, and a cast of people whose names you may not know now but will definitely know after the conference. We’ll even have an Energy Fair with posters and prototypes from makers and researchers.

Oh yes …

Reasons Not To Attend

1) You Want A Silver Bullet. You watched Al Gore’s movie and your autonomic nervous system IMed “omigod! t3h w0rld is fuxx0red! wtf 2 do?!” to your brain. You’re hoping a pocket-protected superhero will take the stage in comically thick black framed glasses and unveil the Environmental Silver Bullet: a renewable energy source of lower cost than dirty Chinese coal.

Sorry, Virginia, there’s not only no Santa Claus but renewables are a long way from being truly cost-competitive with polluting forms of energy production. Such a Silver Bullet may eventually be invented by the people at our conference and we’re asking presenters to give the numbers and specifics that’ll help you pick the one you think will get there first. But until oil and coal become the expensive way to generate power, we need to look to technology that minimizes their pollution, we can use renewables to solve the energy generation needs of specific industries, and we need to find ways in which we can minimize demand. All of which, I might add, we’re covering at Energy Innovation.

2) You Wish To Suckle At Mammon’s Teat. You watched Al Gore’s movie and you heard him say it’s possible to make a profit and be green and you said, “Yes! I want to make a profit! This can be just like the web!” You gunned your H2 down Sand Hill Road and began mentally spending the $200M you’d IPO solarpetfooddelivery.com and its sockpuppet mascot for.

I’ve got bad news for you: money’s hard to make in the energy biz (unless you’re a national oil company). If it were easy, we’d all be rich. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to the business plan for my carbon-sequestering clean-kitten-burning thorium-powered sports-car startup …

Via: Wikipedia

Henry Walter Bates FRS, FLS, FGS (February 8, 1825 – February 16, 1892) was an English naturalist and explorer most famous for his expedition to the Amazon with Alfred Russel Wallace in 1848. Wallace returned in 1852, but lost his collection in a shipwreck. When Bates arrived home seven years later (in 1859) he had sent back over 14,000 specimens (mostly insects) of which 8,000 were new to science. Bates was born in Leicester and, like Wallace, T.H. Huxley and some other British scientists of the time, he had no formal education in science, and left school at 12. He came from a literate middle-class family and taught himself mainly by reading (like Wallace, Huxley and Herbert Spencer, he was an auto-didact). At 13 he became apprenticed to a hosier. He joined the Mechanics’ Institute (which had a library), studied in his spare time, and collected insects in Charnwood Forest. In 1843 he had a short paper on beetles published in the Zoologist (Bates 1843). Bates became friends with Wallace when the latter took a teaching post in the Leicester Collegiate School. Wallace was also a keen entomologist, and he had read the same kind of books as Bates had, and as Darwin, Huxley and no doubt many others had. Malthus on population, Hutton and Lyell on geology, Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle, and above all, the anonymous Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, which put evolution into everyday discussion amongst literate folk. They also read William H. Edwards on his Amazon expedition (Edwards 1847), and this started them thinking that a visit the region would be exciting, and might launch their careers.(Moon 1976).

In 1847 Wallace and Bates discussed the idea of an expedition to the Amazons, the plan being to defray expenses by sending specimens back to London where an agent would sell them for a commission, and for the travellors to “gather facts towards solving the problem of the origin of species”, as Wallace put it in a letter to Bates. The two friends, who were both by now experienced amateur entomologists, met in London to prepare themselves by viewing South American plants and animals at the main collections (Bates 1863 Preface). Also they collected ‘wants lists’ of the desires of museums and collectors. Letters survive in the Kew library of letters from the pair asking what plants the Director (then William Jackson Hooker) would like them to find. Never has the old adage of a prepared mind been more apposite.

Bates and Wallace sailed from Liverpool in April 1848, arriving in Pará (now Belém) at the end of May. For the first year they settled in a villa near the city, collecting birds and insects. After that they agreed to collect independently, Bates travelling to Cametá on the Tocantins River. He then moved up the Amazon, to Óbidos, Manaus and finally Tefé, which was his headquarters for four and a half years. His health eventually deteriorated and he returned to England, sending his collection by three different ships to avoid the same fate as Wallace. He spent the next three year writing his account of the trip, The Naturalist on the River Amazons (Bates 1863), widely regarded as one of the finest reports of natural history travels.

In 1861 he married Sarah Ann Mason (Woodcock 1969). From 1864 onwards, he worked as Assistant Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society (effectively, he was the Secretary, since the senior post was occupied by a noble figurehead). He sold his personal Lepidoptera collection to Godman and Salvin and began to work mostly on beetles (cerambycids, carabids, and cicindelids). In 1881 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. He died of bronchitis in 1892. A large part of his collections are in the Natural History Museum. Consult The Field, London, February 20, 1892.

Specimens he collected went to the Natural History Museum [then called the BM(NH)] and to private collectors; yet Bates still retained a huge reference collection and was often consulted on difficult identifications. This and the disposal of the collection after his death are mentioned in Edward Clodd (1916) Memories.

Henry Bates was one of a group of outstanding naturalist-explorers who were supporters of the theory of evolution by natural selection (Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace 1858). Other members of this group included J.D. Hooker, Fritz Müller, Richard Spruce and Thomas Henry Huxley.

Bates’ work on Amazonian butterflies led him to develop the theory of mimicry which now bears his name: Batesian mimicry. This is the mimicry by a palatable species of an unpalatable species. A common example seen in many gardens is the hover-fly which, though bearing no sting, mimics the warning colouration of wasps. Such mimicry does not need to be perfect to improve the survival of the palatable species (Winkler 1968). Bates, Wallace and Müller believed that Batesian and Müllerian mimicry provided evidence for the action of natural selection, a view which is now standard amongst biologists (Moon 1976). Field and experimental work on these ideas continues to this day; the topic connects strongly to speciation, genetics and development (Mallet 2001).

*Visit Link to Wikipedia for references

CALEA (Computer Assistance Law Enforcement) is quietly in the background of current news again, because the FBI is pushing congress to mandate that all future routing equipment manufactured will include back doors for law enforcement. Like in CALEA mandates for telephone switching equipment, such back doors require no warrant to activate, and hence can be secretly enabled at will. Some vendors have already eagerly embraced CALEA inspired backdoors to internet routing equipment in anticipation of future intercept mandates, thereby already compromising the integrity and security their current and future customers. This approach of using backdoors on Internet connected systems, even more so than the original CALEA mandates for wiretapping backdoors in telephone switching centers, is a danger to both our infrastructure and our society.

Singles

It’s a funny thing, seeing Bat For Lashes live. You hear about Natasha Khan’s predilection for headdresses, spooky symbolism and pagan nods and expect something Bjorkian and mystical, and then it turns out she’s wearing a normal top and jeans and is hugely self-effacing onstage, apart from when she’s getting the audience to howl like wolves. It’s almost disappointing. It’s not actually, of course, because she’s something really quite special live. What’s A Girl To Do? is special as well, a ethereally demonic 60s girl group svengali’d by Chan Marshall, Sarah Nixey and Trish Keenan from Broadcast. Nixey has her own single out this week too, back to the classy electro-futurist grindstone on a cover of the Human League’s The Black Hit Of Space. That she now looks like Ray Of Light era Madonna is less easy to contemplate. Bloc Party coming on after the Chili Peppers at Live Earth was almost as odd a piece of scheduling as how late the Pussycat Dolls were on, although in the latter case they wouldn’t have had to come down from Kinross. Hunting For Witches reminds all that they can still be angular when they want. No more of this sort of thing, obviously, but at least the Pilooski Re-Edit of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons’ Beggin’, as well as having no point whatsoever, doesn’t have some anonymous dancefloor diva wailing over it. Everyone who picks up a guitar has something at least halfway listenable in them, apart from Dogs, and in The Hours’ case it’s the tremendous not-stadium-actually-let’s-say-800-capacity-venue piano pop of reissued Ali In The Jungle. Like them, but better, Tokyo Police Club may never match the vitality of their debut single, but 7″ Your English Is Good suggests next year’s album may yet prove us wrong.

Albums

There’s some odd things going on in this week’s new release piles, and we don’t just mean that Smashing Pumpkins album that’s essentially Billy Corgan’s second solo album renamed under the band so that people will notice this time (we know Siamese Dream was virtually recorded solo, but that was different). Victoria Hart, for instance. She was the singing waitress “plucked from obscurity” to sing at a massive Cannes party, and less than two months later she has a full album ready for release on a major label. As does Paul Potts, who was the underdog winner of Britain’s Got Talent from a pool of performers in all areas of showbiz, so it wasn’t like a singer had to win, the final being held four weeks ago. How curious. Anyway. Our Love To Admire sounds on the face of it not unlike the previous two Interpol albums: dankness, echoey guitars, Joy Division bits, ominous portents, poor lyrics. It sounds like it’s had a little more spent on creating a bigger atmosphere, aided by the move to a major label and Rich Costey at the controls, and it’s not as immediately arresting as Turn On The Bright Lights or Antics, but there’s patches which suggest more light and shade has been welcomed into their world. It could well be a grower. Spoon have been around for twice as long with an eighth of the widespread critical impact, last album Gimme Fiction nearly putting them in the Shins bracket of odd but accessible wonky indiepop before the Shins ruined it as they went and started selling records. Sixth album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga attempts to follow the same crossover course but gets bound up in its own sense of the smartly quasi-experimental. It unfortunately won’t take them out of the cult collegiate bracket, but it grooves, it swings in an alt-Motown sense and in America at least a lot of people will find a new favourite album the majority haven’t heard. The Strange Death Of Liberal England readily admit they take their cues from the Canadian choral post-rock modern tradition, Constellation Records in particular, and Forward March! is liberally doused in choral chanting, part-orchestral mighty arrangements, FX pedal attacks and titanic building, yet there’s still something very lo-fi and British about it which marks them out as a hugely exciting prospect. No Motor In The Sky Oil On The City, though? Glaswegian ska collective The Amphetameanies seem to have been going forever and have had so many names pass through their ranks that Now That’s What I Call… The Amphetameanies, given a full release after sneaking out in December, includes This Boy, written for them by Alex Kapranos before he left and recorded it for Franz Ferdinand. The current line-up still includes Bis’ John Disco and Belle & Sebastian brass man Mick Cooke. Into the reissues, starting with a band who are members of that select group that have had a far greater influence than they ever sold records but because of their modus operandi and lack of eyecatching tragedy will never be as commercially feted as your Drakes or Buckleys. Young Marble Giants made an album, played a couple of years’ worth of gigs, quietly drifted apart, play one-off gigs on special occasions and are still in contact with each other, and there it is. Except, that album was 1980’s Colossal Youth, a spooked, minimally pastoral introverted lo-fi masterpiece released well before Victoria Coren and her word hunters could put a date of coinage to that last term. Alison Statton sings offhandedly like imminent disaster hasn’t quite been noticed yet, main writer Stuart Moxham (who conceived the band as a reaction against punk and didn’t want Alison in the band) plays circular muted rhythm guitar, Phil Moxham’s elastic bass drives the operation almost straightforward, a drum machine programmed by the Moxhams’ cousin beats away forlornly in the background and a seaside organ and ring modulator makes an occasional cameo. Kurt loved them, Courtney’s Hole covered them, Peter Buck has namedropped them. Allegedly there are new songs in the pipeline but in the meantime Domino are putting it out with the instrumental Testcard EP, B-sides and demos on a seperate disc, so as not to spoil the mood. The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band did not go in for minimalism much, not when there were music hall traditions to warp, trad jazz to bend into peculiar squares, exploding robots, costumes to adopt, trouser presses, theremin legs and recordings on four track tape recorders to work to their extremes. The four albums they recorded in the prime of their lifetime are back out at mid-price, and every home should have at least one of Gorilla (The Intro And The Outro, songs as performed on Do Not Adjust Your Set, giving Ben Gibbard’s band a name); The Doughnut In Granny’s Greenhouse (psychedelia, My Pink Half Of The Drainpipe, titular reference to passing solids); Tadpoles (Urban Spaceman, Canyons Of Your Mind) and Keynsham (title inspired by a radio advert for a pools results prediction service). Enjoy the Foo Fighters last night? Then you may be interested in the tenth anniversary reappearance of The Colour And The Shape (actually released in May, but who’s counting), produced by rock production’s foremost Ray Stubbs soundalike Gil Norton and the first recorded as a band after Grohl had done everything on their eponymous debut himself. The expanded version means a disc containing six B-sides, including their cover of Baker Street. And who knew we’d live so long as to be able to buy Sleeper’s Greatest Hits? Honestly, they’re not as bad as post-Britpop culture would have you believe.

By now you have probably heard that episode 2 (‘Great Plains’) of the BBC’s series Planet Earth (currently in its second series) included amazing footage of the elephant-killing lions of Savuti in Chobe National Park, northern Botswana. While most people ‘know’ that elephants are immune to predation thanks to their size, nobody has told this to the Savuti lions. Hunting at night, when the elephant’s poor night vision puts them at a major disadvantage, the lions co-operate as a pride of about 30 individuals to bring down and dispatch elephant prey. It is amazing. But, as usual, the media is leading us all horribly astray. We should make clear to begin with that these are not just any old lions, behaving spontaneously or opportunistically: they are a specialised, highly experienced population that have, uniquely, become elephant killers. While there are some major questions as to how the Savuti lions learnt to do this, Planet Earth didn’t, unfortunately, touch on how old this culture is, or how it originated. It is thought that the Savuti lions have learnt over time to kill bigger and bigger prey, each time winning success by the virtue of their large pride size. Lions elsewhere can – opportunistically – kill Cape buffalo Syncerus caffer* (weighing c. 1000 kg) and sometimes hippo Hippopotamus amphibious (c. 1500-3500 kg), and it has been speculated that, after learning to successful tackle and kill hippo, the lions became bold enough to begin regularly taking juvenile elephants, eventually moving up to adults. And if you’re wondering: YES, the Savuti lions have been recorded attacking and killing adult elephants.* Though note that some lion populations are specialist buffalo-killers. In Tanzania’s Lake Manyara National Park, George Schaller (1972) reported that an amazing 62% of all lion prey was made up of Cape buffalo, with 81% of this 62% being adult male buffalo. Buffalo-killing is also important to the lions of Kruger National Park, and studies here have shown, significantly, that male lions are not just frequent and successful hunters: they are also the lions that are best at killing buffalo (Funston et al. 1998). A few opportunistically recorded events may have encouraged the lions to view elephants as potential prey. In their National Geographic film Ultimate Enemies, wildlife film-makers Dereck and Beverly Joubert recorded a case where, after a fight with another bull, a defeated elephant lay, wounded, on the ground. Understandably, the elephant’s misfortune became the hungry lion pride’s gain. Wildlife photographer and travel writer Leigh Kemp recorded a case where an old, weakened bull that collapsed and became unable to stand was discovered and eaten (while still alive) by opportunistic lions. It is tempting to suggest that these events and others like them might have been catalysts in encouraging the development of elephant-killing in the Savuti lions. Numerous other instances of elephant-killing have been filmed and documented by the Jouberts, and in 1997 they published a book covering this behaviour in depth (The Lions of Savuti: Hunting with the Moon, published by National Geographic). The Lions of Savuti: Hunting with the Moon records something like 15 years of observations, and even in 1990 the Jouberts were estimating that about 20% of the Savuti lion’s diet was made up of elephant. I would love to know if the behaviour goes back further than this, as personally I find it highly unlikely that this behaviour really is something that the lions have ‘just learnt’. Historically, Africa was filled with a lot more lions than it is now, not to mention elephants, and given the extraordinary behavioural flexibility of lions* I suspect that elephant-killing is something that lions have practiced many many times in the near and distant past. * If you’re read Bruce D. Patterson’s outstanding The Lions of Tsavo (Patterson 2004) you’ll know that studies of the Serengeti-type lion that we’re all so familiar with (e.g. Schaller 1972) have ‘created an orthodoxy around lion biology that applies poorly to the species elsewhere’ (p. 138). The fact that the Jouberts were photographing and filming this behaviour negates one of the claims that have appeared as a result of Planet Earth’s coverage: this being that the BBC were the first to film this behaviour (not that anyone working for the BBC has said this, so far as I can tell). In fact Ultimate Enemies, showing scenes of night-time elephant predation by Savuti lions, was broadcast in North America in 2004. This is not to downplay the BBC’s commendable efforts, however, and it is clear that obtaining the sort of footage they did is tremendously time-consuming, dangerous, and requires a monumental amount of effort. With panicked elephants lumbering around in the dark, and surrounded by hungry and aggressive lions that routinely kill animals weighing many hundreds of kilos, the camera teams were in the middle of the bush, in the middle of the night, in small jeeps with open sides and windows. What did we actually get to see? The answer to this is both positive and negative. To begin with, it seems that the lions used psychological warfare to intimidate and confuse the elephants: loud roaring in the dark. This behaviour has been recorded in other lion populations and also in leopards, and it seems that the idea is to scare prey into making an ill-thought dash for ‘safety’. Paying particular attention to juvenile and adolescent elephants, especially those that were separated from the rest of the herd, the lions were then shown attacking the hind legs and haunches of fleeing elephants, biting and clawing and hanging on to the pursued animal. And that… is about it. Here’s where we come to the negative, particularly problematic, part of this whole story. We empathise with elephants. And, somehow, seeing them being killed and eaten by big cats is, for many people, just wrong. That may or may not be a justifiable point of view, but what is undeniable is that elephant-killing is protracted, unpleasant, and gory. Consequently almost none of the actual killing was shown. By clawing and biting at the elephant’s legs, the lions hamstring a chosen elephant, and also use the combined weight of multiple individuals to bring it down. This apparently happens surprisingly quickly. From spotting an elephant, to pursuing it, to getting it to collapse: all can take as little as 30 seconds. Once an elephant is down, some of the lions work on clamping its trunk shut, and I presume that they might also attack the throat and mouth. Like it or not, we can assume that lions at the other end of the animal will now begin feeding. The elephant make take about 30 minutes to die. It does not sound nice, or look nice. I empathise with elephants, and do not enjoy the thought of them being killed. But the fascination that I have for animals makes me want to know more about what actually happens. This is a natural act of predation: sure, it’s not pleasant, or pretty, but I want to know what happens. For me, the footage was ultimately disappointing, then, in showing bugger all (worth noting here is that views on the screening of acts of predation are starting to change. See Finally: big cat kills uncensored and uncut). What makes this all the more frustrating is the implication from some that the lions are downright nasty, committing an evil, murderous act that is heinous and unjust. An article – titled ‘The killing fields’ – that appeared in Times2 (a supplement to the British newspaper The Times) described the footage as ‘possibly the most shocking natural history footage you will have seen’. It went on to state that ‘If you have any sentimental feelings about lions, prepare to lose them’. I’m sorry, but that’s crap. The appreciation I have of lions and their amazing behavioural flexibility and unique social system is increased by the knowledge that they have learnt to kill elephants. Yes it’s gory, and – no doubt about it from our point of view – upsetting and even horrific, but it is an amazing thing that we should wonder at.Coming eventually: agamas, tupuxuarids, fake Chinese turtles, temnospondyls for beginners, kinglets and the passerine supertree, more on sea snakes, anguids, giant eagles and plethodontids, those lost tree frogs, storks and (one day) rhinogradentians. For many of these posts you’ll have out check Tetrapod Zoology at its new location here.
Refs - - Funston, P. J., Mills, M. G. L., Biggs, H. C. & Richardson, P. R. K. 1998. Hunting by male lions: ecological influences and socioecological implications. Animal Behaviour 56, 1333-1345. Patterson, B. D. 2004. The Lions of Tsavo: Exploring the Legacy of Africa’s Notorious Man-Eaters. McGraw-Hill, New York. Schaller, G. 1972. The Serengeti Lion. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

It seems like many blogs have turned off TrackBacks because of spams. Many actually thinks that TrackBacks are dying. However, I still see many popular blogs keeping their TrackBacks on for legit linkbacks.

Using TrackBacks with Wordpress and TypePad is easy. The blog would automatically send out or receive requests if it is enabled.

If you are using Google’s Blogger and you would like to send out a TrackBack request after you have linked to a post, you can use Wizbang or HaloScan to do it. There are two pieces of information that you need to know for any pingback; the TrackBack URL that you would like to ping and the permalink of your blog post. WordPress or TypePad usually have the TrackBack URL labeled as “trackback” and it can be found at the bottom of the post. The permalink of your post is the actual URL of your particular blog post (not the blog home page).

I have a new writing project on my mind. It’s a fairytale… or, rather, a series of fairy tales. Three in all, and I figure they’ll fit together nicely into a single book.
I know, I know, Boomer Sisters #3 isn’t finished yet, so it’s a bit crazy to be thinking about the next project, but I just can’t help myself. It’s actually something I’ve been thinking about for a long time now, and the idea is (finally) starting to really take shape. The three stories are titled The Helper In The Sun, The Moon Friend, and The Invisible Giants. The first two are related, and the third is completely independent. I started writing the last one a year or two ago. Same with the first one, come to think of it. The Moon story? Haven’t written anything on it yet. But I think they’re going to be a lot of fun to do.
I re-read George MacDonald’s amazing fairy tale The Golden Key yesterday, and it’s just the most perfect story ever. Really got me inspired (and I’ll try not to copy it word for word…).
So… I don’t know when I’ll start this one in earnest, but not until B3 is finished. But I will write these stories. Oh yes, I will. And I’ve already started sketching out the framework…Site Feed: http://projectbluelynx.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Every time something bad happens to me or my family, which is pretty much every other day around here, someone will say something like “It’s about time your luck starts turning around!” Or “Something good is bound to happen soon! Hang in there!”

I know people mean well when they say that, they are generally hoping for good things to come my way. And, I want to believe it! I need some goodness to rain down from heaven and into my life– But, I don’t believe it. Good things are NOT headed my way and I’m just tired of trying to pretend like they are.

(Oprah’s all “You get back what you put in! Be positive! The Secret!” Rainbows! Ponies! Love! Schools in Africa!”)

You know, I’ve tried to remain positive in the face of all the negativity in my life. I’ve tried to keep a sense of humor about it all. “Bulging disks! HILARIOUS!” “Uninsured motorist? HAHAHA!”

But yesterday was the last straw. Yesterday was the day that I cried uncontrollably while shaking my fists at God.

(My Dad’s all “This is not God’s fault. This is your fault for turning your back on God. If you would repent and re-commit your life, things would start looking up for you! Why do you keep running from God?)

Truthfully, I’m not angry at God. I don’t blame God for my problems, but there’s something very liberating about lifting your fists towards the heaven and screaming “Whyyyyyyyy?”

Yesterday, I was out doing some grocery shopping for The Annual PigHunter/Sons camping trip. As I was out and about, I decided to stop at the gas station and fill the tank up with gas so Tony wouldn’t have to do it early in the morning. (Filling up the gas tank is almost as thoughtful as giving an unexpected blowjob around here!) I pulled into the gas station and opened the car door carefully, as there was a stone pillar type thing a few inches away.

I got out of the car, and reached in to get my purse. As I was taking my wallet out, I heard the voice of a man directly behind me.

“Excuse me, ma’am.”

I jumped and turned to see who was behind me and why there were all up in my personal space and when I did, I hit the car door with my enormous ass and BAM! It hit the stone pillar.

I was afraid to look. We just bought this car. We just fucking bought this car.

“What do you want?” I snapped at the man.

“well, me and my girlfriend and my little girl just ran out of gas and I swear, we’re not homeless or anything, we just ran out of gas and I have no money and is there any way you can help us?”

I looked over and saw his girlfriend and daughter sitting in the car and while my first reaction was to say “SCREW YOU” because seriously, dude, you just made me dent my brand new used van door and I hate you so much. But then, I thought about all of the things that have happened to me in the past few months and what if I had run out of gas and didn’t have any money to put more in? How could I NOT help?

I told him I didn’t have any cash, but I’d go inside and get him $10 with my debit card.

Before I walked away to go inside, I looked at the damage to my door.

It was bad. A huge dent AND a gnarly scratch.

I held it together while I went into pay for a strangers gas, but I did tell the cashier what had just happened.

“Why did you help?” she asked. “You shouldn’t have done that. There are scammers out there.”

“I know.” I said, as I tried to hold the tears back. The tears for MY VAN DOOR. “I know, but what if it wasn’t a scam? I would hate for that to ever happen to me, so I wanted to help.”

“Well, bless you.” She said. “It’s going to come back to you 10 fold.”

(My Inner Bitch is all “HA! Sure it is! Remember that really nice thing you did for your friend last month, because you love her so much and now she’s not speaking to you?! 10 FOLD MY ASS, lady!”)

As soon as I got back to my car, I lost it. I saw the dent and I just lost it.

I know! It’s just a DENT.

“At least you’re alive! I mean, at least that man wasn’t a psycho killer who came up and stabbed you in the liver! YOU STILL HAVE YOUR LIVER! It’s a dent, dude!”

But that dent represents all of the bad luck that I’ve had these past few months. I look at that dent (because you know I can’t stop looking at the dent, right?) and I get so angry. I was trying to help a stranger out and really, I didn’t want anything in return, except for maybe THE DOOR OF MY USED NEW CAR TO NOT GET JACKED UP.

Is that too much to ask?

Apparently, the answer is yes, it is too much to ask because well, there’s a dent in my car door.

Tony was mad when he first saw it “Oh well, it’s your car and if you want to drive around in a car with dents on it, then that’s your problem.”

Because, you know, I did it on purpose.

He quickly realized he was being a bit of a jerk and so he hugged me and told me it was an accident and that we’d have it fixed. Which, no we won’t. I can’t justify fixing a dent in my car when he’s driving around without air conditioning in his car.

I don’t know, it sounds pretty stupid now that I’m typing it out. (Wahhh, I did something nice for someone and I got a dent in my car in return.) But when I first started writing this, it just felt VERY Serious.

It really did.