Chinese birthday candle from Corrie in UB

Cold

illustration in Van Loon's Geography: The Story of the World We Live In

Hendrik van Loon

1882-1944 Dutch/American

The Hideously Arrogant Desire to Preserve the Cultures of Poor Countries Against the Influence of the Cultures of Rich Countries as Living Ethnographical Museums for Citizens of the Rich Countries to Visit

“One afternoon, in the early spring of 1993, a young American Peace Corps volunteer in a north central town of Mongolia expressed to her Mongol friend, as they walked down the town's main street together, a sense of disappointment that local Mongols were learning modern Western dances soon to be demonstrated in a public performance. She animatedly explained that she personally liked traditional Mongol dances, had learned some herself, and thought that it was inappropriate for Mongols to learn modern dances. Like many Westerners, this young American had a certain vision of the Mongols that the incursions of modernity, in this case forms of modern pop dancing, threatened. Her tone and the way she addressed her Mongol acquaintance suggested that she knew what the Mongols should do based on her authority as an American.”

--Kevin Stuart, Mongols in Western/American Consciousness, 1997

Mine-golia

Solitude

"From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Once a certain capacity to resist distractions is achieved, people become less sensitive to distractions and more capable of maintaining mindfulness and staying inwardly absorbed and concentrated. Such people, unless on a mission of helping others, don't seek any interaction with the external physical world. Their mindfulness is their world, at least ostensibly."

www.TheSteppe.com

Live in Russia

Search for “Russia” on Google Images, and after a photo of St. Basil's Cathedral and a map of the country, this is the third image that's returned:

http://englishrussia.com/?p=894#comments

“It’s not really like that, we only wear gas masks half the time.”

The Machine Gun in World War I

“The machine gun had been a symbol of European dominance over distant, alien and despised peoples in Africa and Asia.... By the second decade of the twentieth century, the machine gun had become a means whereby those societies that felt they shared the highest values of civilization, religion, philosophy, science, culture, literature, art, music and a love of nature, were able to continue to bleed each other barbarically year after year.”

--Martin Gilbert, The Somme: Heroism and Horror in the First World War, 2006

J.R.R. Tolkien: World War I British second lieutenant

“It seems now often forgotten that to be caught by youth in 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.”
--J.R.R. Tolkien, introduction to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings

“The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme.”
--J.R.R. Tolkien

“Hurrying forward again, Sam tripped, catching his foot in some old root or tussock. He fell and came heavily on his hands, which sank deep into sticky ooze, so that his face was brought close to the surface of the dark mere. There was a faint hiss, a noisome smell went up, the lights flickered and danced and swirled. For a moment the water below him looked like some window, glazed with grimy glass, through which he was peering. Wrenching his hands out of the bog, he sprang back with a cry. 'There are dead things, dead faces in the water,' he said with horror.

“'Dead faces!' Gollum laughed. 'The Dead Marshes, yes, yes: that is their name,' he cackled.”
--J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

World War I

On the firestep in the trenches during the night, you could hear the groaning of the dying — but you couldn't go out to help them. There were rats feeding on their flesh. They were dying there, dying in misery and pain, and the rats were nibbling away at their flesh.
--Cecil Withers, British private

The air in the dugout is so foul that I sit by the entrance. Walter Mayer and Hendrich from my squad sit next to me. Hendrich has completely lost his composure. He is down on his knees and prays. Mayer loses all patience. He tells him off. In this situation a prayer is senseless... Our roof is blown apart by a 28 cm shell. Because I am sitting by the entrance, I am left unscathed, just shoved inside. Most of the men are dead.
--Walter Pechtold, German soldier

The appearance of the trench is atrocious... In places pools of blood. On the protective wall, in the communication trench, stiff corpses covered with tent canvas... An unbearable stench poisons the air... I have not slept for 72 hours. It is raining.
--Charles Delvert, French infantry captain

When we started firing we just had to load and reload. They went down in their hundreds. You didn't have to aim, we just fired into them.
--German machine gunner

The first thing I saw were two legs sticking out of the ground... There was a skull high up in a tree and helmets with bits of head in them...
--John Masefield, British visitor to the front

Some injured men are able to drag themselves to the rear, the one supporting the other, some using their rifles as crutches. Stretcher-bearers follow them in single file, carrying their burdens of suffering... Oh! The terrible explosion! With infernal violence, a shell bursts right amongst this mob and hideously tears it to pieces.
--Thellier de Poncheville, French soldier

Soon a fresh gun gets through the fire to the front. They are selected soldiers. But by midday they, too, are finished. One of them, bleeding, comes to us. The men are so apathetic that they cannot bring themselves to bandage the man.
--Walter Pechtold, German soldier

All day long they lie there, being decimated, getting themselves killed next to the bodies of those killed earlier.
--French officer

The men often cannot eat in the forward lines because of the smell of corpses, and they cannot sleep either.
--Rupprecht Maria Luitpold Ferdinand, German commander

Shrieks of agony and groans all around me... All about me are bits of men and ghastly mixtures of cloth and blood.
--Anthony R. Hossack, British soldier

These are horrendous days... The infantry have lost about half their men, if not more. Some of those who have survived are no longer human beings, but creatures who are at the end of their tether...
--Albrecht von Thaer, German lieutenant-colonel

I can still see the bewilderment and fear on the men's faces when we went over the top. All over the battlefield, the wounded were lying there — English and German, all asking for help... You couldn't help them. I came across a Cornishman, ripped from shoulder to waist with shrapnel, his stomach on the ground beside him in a pool of blood.
--Harry Patch, British private

Among the living lay the dead. As we dug ourselves in, we found them in layers stacked on top of one another. One company after another had been shoved into the drum-fire and steadily annihilated.
--Ernst Junger, German officer

What a slaughter. Hell cannot be this dreadful.
--Alfred Joubaire, French lieutenant

I saw men dead from exhaustion from their efforts to get out of the mud... We were pitchforked into a quagmire in the dark and there was no possibility of a man helping the one next to him... It was the worst instance I came across of what appeared to be a cruel useless sacrifice of life.
--L.W. Kentish, British officer

Under no circumstances must we relax our effort, and we must retain the offensive.
--Douglas Haig, British commander

hand

decomposed German soldier

legless dead French soldier

dead American soldiers

wounded British soldier

sources:
Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War by Alan Kramer, 2007
The Faces of World War I: The Great War in Words and Pictures by Max Arthur, 2007
The Pity of War: Explaining World War I by Niall Ferguson, 1998
The Somme: Heroism and Horror in the First World War by Martin Gilbert, 2006

photographs from Corbis, Getty Images, and the Imperial War Museum London

World War I flyers

skull with aviator's helmet and goggles and German 50-mark note between the teeth as a symbol of the cheapness of an aviator's life

Take the manifold out of my back
Take the crankshaft out of my brain
Take the pistons out of my stomach
And assemble the fucking engine again

--World War I aviators' song

on the side of the underprivileged

“In a discussion on BBC Radio Ulster in August P A MacLochlainn said that in his view the details of Jesus' life as presented in the Bible led him to conclude that he was a homosexual.

“'I believe that a 33-year-old unmarried rabbi living in Israel, in the time that he was living and having a favourite friend among the apostles called John, was quite clearly a gay man,' he said.

“'I am entitled to that belief as a gay Christian.

“'Christ, if he were alive today, would be on the parade with us, on the side of the underprivileged, not standing superciliously at the side looking on.'”


--Tony Grew, Pink News, 2007 December 31

the nastier and more dangerous jobs

“'In the same job, doing the same work, who will be paid more, a woman or a man?'

“'The man!'

“If it's true, then employers are practicing shameful sexism.

“But does this even make sense? If employers knew that women would do the exact same job for less money, they'd hire only women...

“Decades ago, Warren Farrell was the rare man who, with Gloria Steinem and other women, went to feminist protests. He's the only man to have been elected three times to the board of the National Organization for Women. He told me, 'I used to wear a "59 cent" pin to protest the fact that men earned a dollar for each 59 cents [now it's 78.5 cents] that women earned for the same work.'

“But then he had his 'eureka' moment.

“WARREN FARRELL: 'I asked myself one day if men are earning a dollar, maybe I'll go out and start an all-female firm and I'll be able to produce products for fifty-nine cents, that male firms are producing for a dollar... I'd get rich! [So I thought] there's something wrong with the statistic.'

“Farrell then spent about fifteen years going over U.S. Census data and other studies. He found that the wage gap exists not because of sexism, but because more men are willing to do certain kinds of jobs. He illustrates this when making speeches.

“He asks people to stand up if they work more than forty hours a week, or, 'if you worked in a field that exposed you to the wind, the rain, and the snow for at least two years of your life...' He goes on to list some of the nastier and more dangerous jobs.

“Again and again more men stand. 'That's why men earn more,' says Farrell. Men take jobs that are more likely to require longer hours, longer commuting times, safety risks, and frequent travel. Those jobs pay more because fewer people want to do them.

“It's not sexism, he said, it's just supply and demand. Women make less because they want different things.

“WARREN FARRELL: 'The women themselves say they're far more likely to care about flexibility. The men say: I'm far more likely to care about money.'”


--John Stossel, Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Why Everything You Know Is Wrong, 2006

Urban Dictionary: theif

Theif
a dislesxic stealer purhson thad dunt spel too gud.

147 up, 23 down

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=theif

niche political games

"It was the British who developed the idea of the board game as an instrument of moral instruction and exported it to America. There, it was adapted to promote the American Dream of free enterprise and economic success.

"This crusading element in board games is perhaps best exemplified by the best-selling game in history - Monopoly - which celebrated wealth and avarice in the wake of the Great Depression. Ironically, this most capitalist of games was derived from a radical socialist game first published in Britain in 1913....

"The British continue to produce niche political games like War on Terror which plays on satire, but mainstream British games designers have joined the computer games revolution."


--BBC Four Programmes: Games Britannia - Monopolies and Mergers

the graves we lie in

Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us;
The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in,
The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us,
We bargain for the graves we lie in...

--James Russell Lowell, "The Vision of Sir Launfal"

Winter Night

"There is a time of apprehension which begins with the beginning of darkness, and to which only the speech of love can lend security."

--Kay Boyle, "Winter Night"

Linus Pauling, 1962 Nobel Peace Prize laureate

1945 March 7, Los Angeles Examiner:

"Jap Flag Painted on Garage Door

"Altadena, March 6--'Americans die but we love Japs.'

"On the walls of the garage at the home of Dr. Linus Pauling, Caltech chemistry professor, last night were emblazoned those words. Near by, also in red paint was a crude Jap flag.

"Dr. Pauling, developer and chairman of the chemistry and chemical engineering department at Caltech, recently hired a 24-year-old Japanese-American from the relocation center at Hart Mountain to do gardening work for him.

"The young Japanese-American, George Miniaki, was born in Gardena and is a graduate of Monrovia High School. His parents are still at the relocation center.

"Said Dr. Pauling:

"'I do not know who is responsible for this un-American act. I suspect, however, that this trespass on our home was carried out by one or more of those misguided people who believe that American citizens should be persecuted in the same way that the Nazis have persecuted the Jewish citizens of Germany.'"

towards 1941 December 7: weep on the shoulders

"Let us begin with a short and elementary lesson in practical economics.

"The Japanese, cooped up on their little island, and as prolific as Italians, need more land. All the pretty words in the world and all the treaties in the world and all the well-meant speeches of all the well-meaning old ladies and gentlemen in the world won't change this fact....

"They live in a country that is smaller than California (155,652 square miles for California and 148,756 square miles for Japan) and of these only 16,000,000 acres can be used for agriculture, which is less than 2% of all the arable land of America. If you want the comparison to come a little nearer home, it is a trifle less than the improved farmlands of New York State alone. Even with the help of one of the best staffs of scientific agricultural experts to be found anywhere in the world, you will see at a glance what sort of problem it is that faces these poor island folk. Living so near the sea-shore they would of course fish; but although they have now reached the point where they are raising certain sorts of fish in the muddy water of their rice fields, the difficulty remains unsolved and unsolvable in view the fact that the population increases by more than 650,000 people a year.

"It was inevitable therefore that Japan should look for more territory; and it was only natural that first of all she should think of the badly administered and sadly neglected lands that lay just across the China Sea.... The road to Manchuria was indicated by the land bridge of the Korean peninsula from which the mainland of Japan was separated by the narrow Strait of Korea. This strait is only 102 miles wide and is conveniently divided into halves by the Tsushima islands, those islands near which the Japanese fleet destroyed the Russian squadron in the year 1905, and killed Russia as a possible rival in eastern Asia....

"The immediate causes for a war are rarely interesting. It is the real underlying motives that count. In this case, as in the case of the expedition of 1592, they were to be found directly and absolutely in the necessity of the Japanese government to provide its rapidly increasing population with food.

"As soon as Japan had defeated Russia and had driven the Muscovite troops back from the Yalu River, the river that separates Korea from Manchuria, Korea became a Japanese protectorate. In 1910 it became a part of the Japanese Empire quite as much as Formosa, which the Japanese had taken from the Chinese in 1895, or the southern half of the island of Sakhalin, which they had taken from the Russians in the year 1905 in lieu of a war indemnity. Today already half a million Japanese have moved in among the twenty million Koreans. The rest will follow in due course of time.

"As for Manchuria, it had long been a bone of contention between the two nations that fought for supremacy in the northern half of the Pacific. After the Peace of Portsmouth, which made an end to the Russo-Japanese war, the fate of the country was sealed....

"Many people seem to experience a profound indignation at what they are inclined to denounce as a brutal expression of 'Japanese ambition'. I would rather call them 'Japanese necessities'. In matters of international policy, a certain healthy egoism is rather a desirable quality. Japan has got to find an outlet for the extra people at home. It is finding such an outlet in northern Asia, in a part of the world that is very lightly populated, and that has been accustomed to such outrageous forms of government that the inhabitants cannot possibly be worse off now than they were ever before.

"If this northern Asiatic safety-valve did not exist, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Australia, New Zealand and the western coast of America would be forever exposed to a Japanese invasion and we would be obliged to station a battle-ship in front of every Polynesian island lest it be towed away over night by a Japanese cruiser.

"On the whole, the present arrangement seems much more practical. Those who feel inclined to shed tears at these callous and selfish utterances, are politely requested to weep on the shoulders of our own Indians."


--Hendrik van Loon, Van Loon's Geography: The Story of the World We Live In, 1932

Dolma Ling Convent fire

"Hi guys,

"Just seeing news that the Dolma Ling nunnery in Ulaanbaatar suffered a major fire. I'm just telling everyone I know who's been there or might have some particular sympathy, so maybe we can get some donations flowing their way to rebuild next year. So heartbreaking.

"Yours in the Dharma,

"Konchog"

http://jim-wandering.blogspot.com/2009/12/nunnery-destroyed-by-fire.html

"Friday morning, about 4AM, fire destroyed the main building of the Dolma Ling Nunnery that housed the kitchen, dinning room and was also home for several of the eldest nuns. Fire officials are still determining whether the fire was due to shoddy electrical wiring (a problem in developing countries due to poor construction standards) or the real possibility that it was deliberately set. It is a miracle that no one was hurt, especially due to the fact that the eldest nun, over 95 years old, had to escape by climbing through a window that fortunately had no bars (most first-floor windows in Ulaanbaatar are barred). The building is a total loss but it might have been partially saved except the night watchman was no where to be found and he had the gate key that the fire department needed to get into the property (the fire trucks arrived within three minutes after getting the call about the fire). All this with night-time temperatures reaching -30F."

a world about whose values he was so often skeptical

"Melville himself said in Moby Dick, 'to write a mighty book you must have a mighty theme.' Here he had it -- the rebellious struggle of Captain Ahab against the overwhelming, mysterious vastness of the universe and its awesome, sometimes merciless forces....

"What baffled its early readers was the book's wild extravagances of mood and language, its effect of what the modern critic Van Wyck Brooks calls 'a shredded Shakespearean play.' Melville confided to Hawthorne that it had been 'broiled in hell-fire,' referring to the turbulence of his own spirit from which the book sprang. Moby Dick was too powerful for the readers of its time....

"Melville passed the last twenty years or so of his life in almost total obscurity, withdrawn from literary circles. Back in New York, for nineteen years he was a clerk in a customhouse. His long-agitated spirit finally seemed calm. He had withdrawn himself from a world about whose values he was so often skeptical."


--Edmund Fuller and B. Jo Kinnick, Adventures in American Literature: Laureate Edition, 1963

Young Mongolian American Professionals

“To unite Mongolian-American active professionals across the United States and Mongolia by providing development and information sharing opportunities to create positive change to the community.”

YMAPUSA.org

Happy Hajj

Muhammad at the Kaaba

illustration in Siyer-i Nebi (The Life of the Prophet)

ca. 1595 Ottoman

like the despairing sounds of futile existence

"Short films are lithe and trim athletes; TV series and feature films, meanwhile, are colossal lardarses: their bodies great acres of blubber, their pendulous jowls resembling saggy, blue-veined buttocks, their limbs ever-shifting oceans of lumpy porridge, their sugar-encrusted maws forever agape as they release low, continuous bellows directed at the heavens like the despairing sounds of futile existence."

--Toon Zone, "Toons of the 2000s: Top 5 Animated Shorts," 2009 November 23

Haditha Massacre

On 2005 November 19, in the city of Haditha in Iraq, United States Marines murdered 24 people, many of them children.

Abdul Hamid Hassan Ali, 76 - grandfather, father, husband
Khamisa Tuma Ali, 66 - wife
Walid Abdul Hamid Hassan, 35
Jahid Abdul Hamid Hassan, middle-aged
Asma Salman Rasif, 32
Rashid Abdul Hamid, 30
Abdullah Walid, 4
Younis Salim Khafif, 43 - husband, father
Aida Yasin Ahmed, 41 - wife, mother
Noor Younis Salim, 14 - daughter
Sabaa Younis Salim, 10 - daughter
Muhammad Younis Salim, 8 - son
Zainab Younis Salim, 5 - daughter
Aisha Younis Salim, 3 - daughter
girl, 1
Jamal Ahmed, 41 - brother
Marwan Ahmed, 28 - brother
Chasib Ahmed, 27 - brother
Qahtan Ahmed, 24 - brother
Ahmed Khidher - taxi driver
Akram Hamid Flayeh - university student
Khalid Ayada al-Zawi - university student
Wajdi Ayada al-Zawi - university student
Mohammed Battal Mahmoud - university student

Edurelief: Laptops for Teachers

"We are proud to announce that Edurelief has just launched an exciting new program in our ongoing endeavor to promote education in Mongolia. Laptops for Teachers is a program that provides teachers with laptops at 0% interest loans to aid them in their efforts of educating Mongolia's youth. We've been dreaming about this program for a long time and are beside ourselves with excitement that it is finally happening. We delivered our very first laptop this month and are working hard to put together a pilot program for 10 other teachers. We've never seen 10 applicant spots fill so fast, demand is huge.

"Meet Natsagdorj, the first teacher to benefit from our Laptops for Teachers program. Natsagdorj is a 62-year-old Mongolian language teacher and one of only two teachers in the entire country that has a doctorate in teaching Traditional Mongolian Script. Natsagdorj has had a great need for a laptop to continue his research and textbook writing so he can pass his knowledge onto other teachers and students but until becoming a part Edurelief's Laptops for Teachers program, was unable to afford one. Thanks to our 0% interest loan and the ability to pay over an extended period of time, he chose to split up his payments over the next six months and has already started working on a new textbook. It is our hope that with seed money from investors we will be able to provide many more teachers in Mongolia with laptops and thus vastly improving their ability to prepare lessons, share curriculum, and promote education.

"Help us invest in Mongolian education by helping teachers to purchase laptops. These teachers are working face-to-face with children daily and being able to do research, plan lessons, and write and share curriculum makes a huge impact on the development of education. A $500 donation covers the cost of a new laptop, as well as shipping and customs fees related to getting the laptop into the hands of a teacher. This cost is still well below market price in Mongolia and since teachers can split up their loan into as many as 12 monthly payments it's an opportunity that many will benefit from. After the loan is fully repaid we simply use those funds to purchase another laptop. What does this mean for you? It means that over the course of several years, your $500 donation is reused over and over again, aiding teachers and promoting education in Mongolia. Help make a difference today, invest in a teacher."

--Edurelief Staff

http://www.edurelief.org/updates/1109.html

http://www.edurelief.org/

Lord Dunsany's Chess

Chess variant by the British weird-fiction writer Lord Dunsany:

http://www.pathguy.com/chess/Dunsany.htm

tree in Bogd Khan Uul Strictly Protected Area

photo from Corrie

We are speaking on this occasion, not as members of this or that nation, continent, or creed, but as human beings

"Remember your humanity, and forget the rest."

--The Russell-Einstein Manifesto

all collapsed

"All collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago."

--Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

deviantART.com

"Joy" by Tomi Joy

"Bridesmaid" by Sara H

"CDR photo re-touch" by christiane robinson

"Never Hesitate" by jenni tapanila

"ocean 118" by Hengki Koentjoro

deviantART.com

Whiskey River

Whiskey River, don't run dry
You're all I got to take care of me

--Johnny Bush, "Whiskey River"

red piranha (Serrasalmus rhombeus)

"THE MADNESS OF CROWDS

"One morning, deep in the Amazon jungle, a native woman cut her hand while washing clothes on the flat stones set in the bank of the small stream bordering her village. Forgetful, she waded into the dark water to wash away the blood. Suddenly, the stream came alive, churning with piranhas in a hungry frenzy. Hearing her screams, the villagers rushed to her rescue, but in the brief moment it took to reach her, these ferocious fish had reduced her body to shreds. Hundreds such stories are told of the fanatical fury of these fish, but oddly, the piranha in captivity undergoes a strange transformation, and becomes almost a different fish. Alone or with only one or two others, it becomes nervous and jittery, easily frightened by a sudden movement outside the aquarium tank. Still capable of slicing a piece off another fish in the tank, the lonely piranha seldom demonstrates the boldness it possesses when surrounded by others of its kind."

--Animal World in Color, Volume 8 - Hunters: Birds, Fish, and Amphibians, edited by Maurice Burton, Childrens Press: Chicago, 1969

piranha or caribe (Serrasalmus piraya)

"BLOODY BUTCHER OF THE RIVERS

"The most ferocious of all living creatures exists not on land, but in the fresh waters of South American rivers. It is the much-dreaded piranha or caribe, that is irresistibly attracted to blood. No animal, however big, or even a man attempting to ford a piranha-infested stream, can hope to survive if their skin is even slightly scratched. The piranha will instantly attack, and scores, even hundreds of its kind, will rush to the kill, literally slicing their victim to shreds in a matter of minutes. An authentic instance occurred in eastern Brazil, where a horse including its saddle was destroyed in five minutes. This butchery is easy for the killer because its teeth are serrated and sharp enough to cut through flesh and sinew at one snap. Even if a victim drags himself ashore, the piranha still clings, viciously biting to the last moment of its life. Anglers fishing for piranha, for the sake of its delicate flesh, have to use a specially strong hook and line. Ordinary tackle would be snapped like cotton."

--Animal World in Color, Volume 8 - Hunters: Birds, Fish, and Amphibians, edited by Maurice Burton, Childrens Press: Chicago, 1969

Urangoo Baatarkhuyag needs helps to fight leukemia

"Urangoo Baatarkhuyag was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia on Sept 5, 2009. She came to Provo, Utah from Mongolia when she was just 18 years old to attend Utah Valley University. A little less than a year ago, she was awarded a Bachelor's degree in Engineering/Drafting and graduated with honors....

"The blood test results showed leukemia cancer cells spread in the blood stream and deteriorated her immunity. After chemotherapy treatments during these last few days at the LDS hospital in Salt Lake City, the cancerous cells are still found active and further damaged the chromosomes. She is predicted to live few months unless she undergoes an immediate bone marrow transplant which is an extremely expensive procedure....

"She has about 60% survival rate if the procedure is carried out. Our goal is to raise $350,000 to cover the initial cost. She needs our help and generosity to live and smile again. Please, give her the gift of life and donate what you can; every dollar will count and make a difference. Thank you so much for your kindness and generosity."

http://saveuvugirl.blogspot.com/

http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&sid=8505904

clear as water, stiff as earth, high as a rock when the hour nears

Oh, I am drunk
When the hour nears, you will die within a day and a night
The body as soft as cotton and then as hard as wood
Your eyes clear as water and stiff as earth
Your belongings heaped up high as a rock
Will be covered with dust
The very dearest and closest friends turn into demons
Your serenity, burning like fire will collapse like ash...
Your fame like the wind will fade, like the rainbow
And one will throw away like an old fur
What you have treasured like gold

--Danzan Ravjaa, in History of Mongolian Literature by Walther Heissig

nothing is momentous; soon

"Practically all writers and artists are aware of their destiny and see themselves as actors in a fateful drama. With me, nothing is momentous: obscure youth, glorious old age, fateful coincidences--nothing really matters. I have written a number of good sentences. I have kept free of delusions. I know I am going to die soon."

--Eric Hoffer, 1977

Happy Guy Fawkes Night

Blow up the government!

Ways to Celebrate Halloween

"Egg or toilet paper your own house, then, stand outside and angrily blame it on every innocent person who walks by.

"Gather some friends and go Halloween caroling. Instead of singing Christmas songs, knock on doors and try out an A cappella version of Cypress Hill's 'Insane In The Brain.'

"Wait at home for trick or treaters and instead of giving out candy, hold out a big bowl filled with some delicious punch. They have no cups! What are they gonna do without cups? Hilarious."

--PDX Magazine, 2008 October

First Lovecraft Reading in Mongolia

HALLOWEEN SPECIAL at Cafe Amsterdam in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia:
H.P. Lovecraft Horror Stories as read by Radigan Neuhalfen

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."
--H.P. Lovecraft

Thrill to a selection of H.P. Lovecraft's sanity-shattering horror stories in a special Halloween live reading by Radigan Neuhalfen.

H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) is the most influential American horror writer of the Twentieth Century and the acknowledged heir to Edgar Allan Poe. Through his stories, which blended gothic horror with elements of science fiction, Lovecraft presented a stark and compelling view of the universe as something incomprehensibly and horrifyingly vast, within which great forces operate that are essentially indifferent--and perhaps even malignant--towards humanity, a view that has come to be known as "cosmic horror."

Everybody is welcome Wednesday October 28 at 8PM in Cafe Amsterdam for a very special and thrilling evening.

With every influx of light comes new danger.

"Or do men desire the more substantial and permanent grandeur of genius? Neither has this an immunity. He who by force of will or of thought is great and overlooks thousands, has the responsibility of overlooking. With every influx of light comes new danger. Has he light?--he must bear witness to the light, and always outrun that sympathy which gives him such keen satisfaction, by his fidelity to new revelations of the incessant soul. He must hate father and mother, wife and child. Has he all that the world loves and admires and covets?--he must cast behind him their admiration and afflict them by faithfulness to his truth and become a byword and a hissing."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Compensation," Essays, 1841