RadioFreePirate

Freud Head Pops. You know, to suck on.

On that beach, young children were making things that kind of looked like castles by pushing together tiny grains of silicon dioxide. Annoying parents stood by to tell the children what castles did, and did not, look like. The end product was often intricate with buttresses, ornamental shells, and sharp defined corners.

For a moment the children could step back and say “this is a castle,” and very few people would argue with them, but being on the edge of an ocean, beaches also sometimes have waves.

These waves often started somewhere far away, and are the result of many incremental forces. As they approach the shore they have a certain inevitability to them. Waves don’t really give a crap what a castle is supposed to look like, and they don’t really give a crap about the children that made those castles.

In fact, waves aren’t really capable of giving a crap at all. When they’re done, the waves leave behind a clump that’s soft and rounded that doesn’t really look like a castle anymore. It looks like something, but we don’t really have a word for it.

On Ocean Beach some people get tired of building sand castles and choose to interact with the waves directly.

Some people just hang out and bob up and down. Other people float on things that are filled with air, but everyone knows it’s the surfers that really know what’s goin’ on.

…

Other people swim out, and they bob up and down. Sometimes, when people get to the top of a wave, they say “I made this wave, this wave is because of me, and because I’m wearing yellow swimming trunks,” and then lots of other people put on yellow swimming trunks and the swim out, but by the time they get there that guys at the bottom and some guy in red trunks is yelling the same thing.

Other people sit on inflated rafts, so even when they’re at the bottom their little heads peek out over the top of the waves, but, eventually, a lot of those guys tip over or they run out of people that are willing to blow.

It’s the surfers that are the most fun to watch.

They know they didn’t start the waves, but they do study them. While they’re surfing, they don’t congratulate each other for pushing the water closer to the shore. They understand that the wave has a certain inevitability to it, that it doesn’t give a crap about them… it just moves.

So, they play on it and explore its natural contours and do tricks. And, by doing that, they give the wave meaning, human meaning.

— Ze Frank, the Show, Feb. 5, 2007.

Napoleon once said Such work as mine is not done twice in a century. I saved the Revolution as it lay dying, I have cleansed it of its crimes and have held it up to the people shining with fame. Personally, I like the surfers’ revolution better than Napoleon’s. You?

The success of a business is determined by PROFITS not PROPHETS!

The practical, first requirement of good management is to make a profit for the enterprise so that those who made the capital available may be rewarded, and thus encouraged to provide more, through further savings, and so that the worth and dignity of profit as the source of progress and improvement may be simultaneously established.

–Super Valu Sales Service Department, Computing Margins & Mark-ups

Huitzilopochtli - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia — The Nahuas believed the world would end like the other previous four creations. Every fifty-two years, they feared the world would end. Under Tlacaelel, Aztecs believed that they could give strength to Huitzilopochtli with human blood and thereby postpone the end of the world, at least for another fifty-two years. Ironically, the Aztec empire fell at the end of this cycle.

Lady Summer turned me onto Matisyahu, who is lifting up my spirits.  He’s caused a lot of excitement in several musical corners - some are uncomfortable with his perceived co-optation of reggae (even having been accused of “minstrelsy” by Slate), others with his vague, feel-good message that never gets too specific about his Hasidism.

And yet here I am all noodle-dancy,

singing “you have been a refuge for me”

while my husband sighs embarrassedly. 

Isn’t the great journey of music about borrowing, embellishing, and returning to the whole some idea or emotion? What I respond to is his love for the song, and it’s fricking infectious.

Conan vs. Bear vs. Coulter vs. Hitler vs. George Washington vs. British Children

Discuss.

It’s not easy being a Biblical literalist. The meaning of words is painfully strained in only the first few paragraphs of Genesis. By the time you get to the end with the dragons and rivers of blood, you look like a complete wingnut for claiming these words are literally true. But the benefits of Biblical literalism far outweigh these minor drawbacks.

Biblical literalism has served as the rallying cry for such righteous crusades as, well, the crusades, slavery, fish-eats-Darwin automobile ornaments, and — most recently — constitutional amendments outlawing hot man-on-man health insurance. But God’s tough love doesn’t stop there. The Sex in Christ website explains how Biblical literalism also promotes bondage, threesomes, and fisting.

So the next time you’re lying in bed with your loved one(s) and thinking “What would Jesus do?” just remember Psalms 145:16: You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing. Jesus would do fisting. Thus sayeth the word of God.

So I’ve got a lot of tasks I should be completing on my day off.  I managed to water the tomatoes.  I also separated several things into piles during my (unsuccessful) search for my check book.  I walked half a block in scorching sunshine to get a coffee and freak someone out.  She freaked me out too.  I was politely looking at the cafe art, after handing my mug to the guy and asking him to put americano in it.  I am wearing a green t-shirt, an above-the knee khaki/cream skirt, little red and black socks and red shoes.  This girl walks in.  She is wearing a green t-shirt, an above-the knee khaki/cream skirt, red and black argyle socks, and red motherfucking shoes.  She is blonde, though, and has a scarf on wrapped like a headband.  This is a relief to me, although I agonized about head covering before I left the house, my brown locks were bare.  I said to her, “We could be in uniform.” She says, “I was just noticing that.” Weird pause.  “Even the red shoes.”  I said, “And red and black socks.”  I couldn’t decide whether to introduce myself.  The man gave me my coffee and I tipped and complimented him.  I put honey and cinnamon in the drink and walked back into the sunshine.

Nobody said a thing about the wooden leg.