Greetings fellow travelers! The road is long and covered with hard flints and who knows where we will end up or what terrible things we may have to become involved in upon our way. All is unexpected as it should be. I for one am extremely grateful that I cannot see the future (apart from what is obvious.) Who would really want to know? I was once given a very nice silver sticker upon which was written in an attractive typeface: THE FUTURE IS STUPID and it now seems to be an accurate statement. I also like the phrase 'Welcome to the future - it's broken' This phrase comes in handy as pretty much everything that is manufactured now seems to work for about ten minutes before it breaks and has to be replaced. So if someone informs me that something is broken I now say to them: Welcome to the future! What fun I have.
I have spent some very dark days in the woods recently. Dark drizzly foggy darkness. I was up there late the other afternoon, scuttling about in the gloaming, and night seemed to fall so suddenly that I didn't have time to get off the hill in any light. Luckily it was so muddy that I seemed to slide right out of the place. A bit like being spat out really, but I don't take it personally.
Interesting things are happening in the woods of late. It looks very much like Spring to me. The green shoots of recovery or summink, but unlike the green shoots of recovery in the economy these green shoots are actually real. Does anyone listen to what politicians say anymore? I do sometimes, though usually to witness the unintended irony, such as Hillary Clintons speech about the Egyptian Government and the Egyptian peoples right to freedom of speech and protest whilst Ray McGovern is being bundled away and arrested in front of her very eyes. If anything Hillary appeared to be enjoying it.
In our own glorious kingdom we have a slice of smegma like William Hague warning Arab leaders that people have a right to peaceful protest. He says this is in a country where the government gets the police force to attack, arrest and also kettle protesters for many hours at a time in freezing cold weather (false imprisonment) and which also kills the occasional bystander (Ian Thomlinson) and then lies about the whole event.
The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court has said that Muammar Gaddafi, and his key aides, will be investigated for possible crimes against humanity but for some reason they seem very slow around those parts to get Tony Blair and the other war criminal scunge into a court of any sort and this being about eight years down the line. Is there anything wrong with this picture? No this is normal service. Welcome to the future.
On a slightly nicer note, I can introduce you to the first Primrose of the year, which is a very welcome sight indeed and not broken at all.
13 comments:
Just in case anyone wondered that isn't a duck jumping off the cliff in the first photo, it's a fencepost. Many thanks to the Maid for bringing this to my attention.
the forest looks awesome. can't say it better.
I was a little surprised to see the spring is so far ahead there. here we've just begun to celebrate the first days of plus degrees in months.
what is going on now in international politics appears to me just as a show they don't even care to try to act out anymore. I guess we're approaching collective understanding about the nature of this bullshit we've let to blossom, and even the actors see we already know the plot. gets old, doesn't it?
cheers and thanks P2P. We had a mild wet few weeks which seems to have brought spring on, the birds knew it before I did. It's been about +5 to 10 here lately with a sharp northerly wind and now with a dark moon I should be stepping outside to look at the stars.
A few weeks ago the news was wall to wall Egypt which has now become wall to wall Libya, the earthquake in NZ only getting a brief mention before the news gets back to its present agenda of passing interest.
What is actually happening I have no idea, to me it seems chaotic, maybe chaos is the point, but yes it also looks old and tired, as do the actors, because they are. Maybe we can put a star on the pavement for them and then put them in a hall of infamy.
Being spat out was Karma comedy for you having been scuttling about in the gloaming so late to begin with. Just like a Mother.
Fabulous images John. Seeing them, nothing else exists.
>respects<
The Maid. Heh.
Cheers and thanks Nina. Yes I think she was telling me to get out before it got completely dark as it is not a place I am supposed to be at night, when it is given back to its rightful inhabitants - the animals.
I hope all is going well where you are Nina, from what I have seen the winter has been very cold and long in America. Spring coming soon for us all.
all the best to you
Hullo John, it seems the answer is no, I haven't commented. Well not here at any rate. For the record: Lovely Lovely.
And hats off to the maid for sorting out that duck thing. Whilst I suspect that she might just be the only person in the world to have thought that it was a duck, at least now the whole thing has been sorted out. Whew!
Er... smiley winky thing, sure enough.
And regards and such.
Hi ,John ,nice photos ,the first one is very beautifull ,i like this time, also that lonely white rose ,welcome to the future ,it's the right meanning for the new midlle east ,it's the fever of democracy invading here .
Everyone thinks about future , and works for good one ,but whos know how it will be.
What's that plant on the trunks of trees ?
Springtime seems nearby in syria ,mybe after one month ,the ground will get nice green carpet ,it's lovely quiet time .
All the best for you John .
Cheers and thanks very much nobody. It's good that we have cleared up the duck thing as I know it has been a concern of perhaps one person and they weren't very concerned, so it good to sort that out.
If anybody else thinks they can see birds in any photos they are generally seagulls. The birds that is, not the people seeing them. There's no confusion here.
Choukran Reem. I hope for a better world too for the people living here, we have to keep working for that. I wish the people of the middle east all the best with it. I have never been to any middle eastern countries so I really have no good idea how life would be like there, but if they want change I really hope they get the change they are looking for.
There is lots of moss on the beech trees and the small green plants coming up around them are mainly bluebells, which will carpet the woodland in a few weeks time with their lovely blue flowers. To see the green shoots means we have turned another corner in our year and the worst of winter should be over for us now.
thanks Reem and all the best to you too.
Picked up this interesting video via famous for 15 that is worth passing on. Analysis of recent earthquakes. This was put up on youtube on Wednesday, before todays earthquake in Japan.
7.2 quake in Japan, analysis of current situation globally - March 9, 2011
The program the video maker dutchsinse is using to view the earthquake information is available for free at cnet here:
Earthquake 3D program
It has a feature that updates the globe with the newest quakes.
The rest of the links are here:
European seismic agency shows NON RECORDED USGS quakes
emsc earthquake
live internet seismic server (not so easy for me to understand)
seismic data
IRIS earthquake browser (good)
IRIS
Intellicast - Interactive Weather Map (better)
Intellicast
global volcanism program (Volcanic Activity Reports)
volcano
telemetry data from USGS (Earthquakes from the Past 24 Hours)
USGS
philippine institute of volcanology and seismology
phivolcs
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