Pen & ink from Dada's pugilist year, 1985, or just a couple minutes ago?I like about as many anniversaries as I don't. They mark fond memories as well as some really bad ones. Yesterday was an anniversary date. It was the day of Dada's ("Daily," originally) Dally's first blog published here four years ago.
It was on the eve of Juneteenth when I recalled a brief appearance by Black Panther Party co-founder Huey Newton in my first blog. He appeared to me while driving, adorned in his early Party regalia -- a shotgun and a belt of shells for it across his chest. He looked like he'd just come off his shift doing community work in the black neighborhoods of the San Francisan East Bay. I took to heart his brief message to me.
We've all covered a lot of miles since then and it's been quite a ride. I had no idea in June, 2005 that I'd still be blogging four years later. So Editor Sam and I took yesterday off. We passed it in quiet retrospection, spending some of the pleasant afternoon out on the patio with Mrs. Dada. Dinner was a simple repast of beer and burritos. Too many burritos.
The original point of Dada's was to chronicle events in the midst of the current mass extinction in which we are presently so deeply immersed. I apologize that most of my blogs have focused on politics but, besides contributing a great deal to the future that will undoubtedly be darker because of politics and their affect on the quality and state of life on Earth, politics have significant unavoidable impacts on each of us personally. Sometimes amusingly, other times infuriatingly. Mostly the latter.
I chose the name Dada based on one of my favorite art movements. Dadaism was founded around the time of the first world war. It's movement was a nihilistic reaction that challenged the world's cultural and aesthetic values, and manifested in an art that was nonsense based, full of travesty and absurd incongruities. It was brief lived, flaming out a short seven years after its founding. I regret I haven't been able to better live up to my namesake herein by being more amusing or infuriating as many of the scenes unfolding on the world stage are watched by us with incredulity.
And so, while mass extinctions can take exceedingly long periods of time, geologically they are but a blip on the timeline of cosmic history, much as Dada's has been on a much, much smaller scale. At least that's what four years seemed like to me, yesterday, on the patio with my second editor, Sam. Yet, nonsense, travesties and incongruities continue to flourish.
It was on the eve of Juneteenth when I recalled a brief appearance by Black Panther Party co-founder Huey Newton in my first blog. He appeared to me while driving, adorned in his early Party regalia -- a shotgun and a belt of shells for it across his chest. He looked like he'd just come off his shift doing community work in the black neighborhoods of the San Francisan East Bay. I took to heart his brief message to me.
We've all covered a lot of miles since then and it's been quite a ride. I had no idea in June, 2005 that I'd still be blogging four years later. So Editor Sam and I took yesterday off. We passed it in quiet retrospection, spending some of the pleasant afternoon out on the patio with Mrs. Dada. Dinner was a simple repast of beer and burritos. Too many burritos.
The original point of Dada's was to chronicle events in the midst of the current mass extinction in which we are presently so deeply immersed. I apologize that most of my blogs have focused on politics but, besides contributing a great deal to the future that will undoubtedly be darker because of politics and their affect on the quality and state of life on Earth, politics have significant unavoidable impacts on each of us personally. Sometimes amusingly, other times infuriatingly. Mostly the latter.
I chose the name Dada based on one of my favorite art movements. Dadaism was founded around the time of the first world war. It's movement was a nihilistic reaction that challenged the world's cultural and aesthetic values, and manifested in an art that was nonsense based, full of travesty and absurd incongruities. It was brief lived, flaming out a short seven years after its founding. I regret I haven't been able to better live up to my namesake herein by being more amusing or infuriating as many of the scenes unfolding on the world stage are watched by us with incredulity.
And so, while mass extinctions can take exceedingly long periods of time, geologically they are but a blip on the timeline of cosmic history, much as Dada's has been on a much, much smaller scale. At least that's what four years seemed like to me, yesterday, on the patio with my second editor, Sam. Yet, nonsense, travesties and incongruities continue to flourish.
14 comments:
Cheers to you on this anniversary. I consider blogging to be a kind of low budget therapy. One gets to rant and process thoughts about whatever you want. There is not scrutiny by editors (besides Sam, and I bet he has some kind of kibble kick back scheme going on!)
or restrictions on how many words you are allowed to use.
Yes it is a healthy outlet in which to express your thoughts & feelings to all the world.
So thank you for your creative rants & artistic layout. etc.
Being one who loves the fine art of sarcasm, I have enjoyed your offerings. Happy Anniversary!
May you continue to write on!
Also tell me about this Avatar change?
Real Photo?
Che Guevera?
Do tell....
Fran: With sincerest apologies. I TOTALLY lost a response here to you I'd been crafting for the past 20-30 minutes. I am soooo sorry.
What did it was, at the end of my comment, I was going to direct you to the previous blog re my avator (much better explained in the one I just lost)....but in going to see exactly what I had said there, I totally erased what I'd written here.
Sorry. I just don't have it in me to begin to reconstruct it again, here, tonight. I really apologize. Just know I really appreciate your blog (as mentioned in the former, now ghost, message).
Don't cha just hate it when posts evaporate into the ether???
It's usually the ones you take the time to write out a long & brilliant post, when they disappear.
Hey! If it's already disappeared you can always CLAIM it was brilliant, and nobody would be the wiser!
Anyway.... your blog & talents are appreciated.
Fran: Thanks for the reassurances, but how ever did you KNOW???!!! Yes, the lost response was brilliant, but now it's lost in the nether (forever)?
Anyway, in it I do recall mentioning eProf's excellent "Blue Dog" explanation of Nancy Pelosi's desperate attempt to hold together a coalition with some semblence of a party with cohesion; of Leah Bolger's so dire a disillusionment with Democrat's after their war funding bill passage earlier this week (again, sigh) that she went down and unregistered herself from the party; of the "I am no longer a democrat" group now forming on FaceBook.
The hope that gave me for a third, fourth or fifth party in 2012 after reading these things I consider the *real* signs of change.
Are we better with four, five, or six parties? Likely not. But I see it as a process to get where we need to go -- back to a *real* TWO PARTY SYSTEM.
First, happy bloggaversary with good wishes for many more to come! Hmmm ... I think I remember your Huey dreampost but can't recall his advice. Your Huey link is dead (to me anyway, see below).
Second, I've been having a helluva time accessing comments/links/vids, not just on your blog. When I try to click the comments, my computer freezes up & needs a manual shut-down. Today I finally got through (I think) ... if this comment gets thrown to the ether as Fran & you were discussing above, just know it had no particular brilliance.
Third, just wanted to say what a pleasure blogs have been since that day at years-end 2005 (or was it years-beginning 2006) when I stumbled on your blog and it's poignant description of your greyhounds. Before that, my only acquaintance with blogs were of the mean & nasty variety. Through Dada's Dally, I have found many views askew, astute observations, and much dadahaha (I luvs the haha).
Finally, were you aware you have a been a kind of hub? That through your blog, other commenters have found commonality & shared exchanges? I speak of myself, Fran, Enigma, and Nona, but I am sure there are many others. That is some good work on your part.
and oh ps (always a ps), since you pointed out the Dada movement began around the time of the 1st world war, let us hope that historians will not one day say Dada's Dally began around the time of the 3rd. but hey, that won't happen if you're right about the mass extinctions (and I fear you are), because there will be no historians to recall such a day!
yeaay, my comment posted! I had copied it just in case. Must've been that little chin rub I gave your avatar's beard before I clicked "publish" that gave me good luck! (now where's my purell ... just kidding ... no I'm not, but it's not your beard that requires purell ... you should see how much dirt has attached to my monitor now that I am breathing foul language at it constantly) ...
talk about synchronicity working overtime. er, rather tuning my receptiveness and allowing myself to witness the consciousness that is universe at play
i just left this as comment on a blog at Scholars&Rogues
hi dawn: great shot of what i initially thought was fan coral. i checked out the fungi perfecti link freedem left. what is interesting is yesterday i spent quite a bit of time on TED after Synchronicity tossed me a link to the talk given by the guy that runs the site of all things mushrooms. He gave an amazing talk on 6 ways mushrooms can save the world…
if you watch it keep your
eyes sharp at about 3:20 and then go watch George Smoot The design of the universe at about 7:05 and about 11:00 and then remember when you’ve seen one of the nova animations of the structure of the brain’s dendritic and axonal entanglement and see if the largest organism on earth, the structure of the universe and of our brain are not highly similar to the point of eerieness… i guess universe prefers known patterns…:
and while poking around my video download folder i start to watch one called "The Quantum Apocalypse" at about 2:25 (2:39) the same imagery of mycelia, dendritic or galactic entanglement again shows up...
and then to read DK's comment as to how your fine up&out&long standing blog is a hub, an exchange point, a social synapse, thru which information is passed off on farther trajectories... one piece of which is you have a %20 (a space) hiding at the end of the huey link.
while i was at TED i ran across this mass extinction talk and thought of you :)
Happy Blogaversary Dada's Dally!
written in and c&p'd from Textedit :P
D.K. Hey, glad you were able to upload your comment (two, actually!).
Flashing back to my '05 ride with Huey, I think he was saying how there's a new minority out there in the US now; that it's comprised of the majority of us. (Something like that.)
Sorry you couldn't access the video. Since you couldn't, I'll describe it for you: "It's the funniest damn video I've ever seen!" (OK, OK, prone to hyperbole here, much like those comments we spend so much time composing that get inadvertently lost before posting are always the best ever written -- so, w/o proof, you'll just have to take my word on this until you regain full computivity, right?)
Yes, I still remember your first comment at Dada's was on that greyhound blog. Glad you kept coming back. I find those dog blogs and travel logs to be my favorites. Sadly, we don't travel as much since Sam came along.
Finally -- Dada's Dally as a hub? never thought of that but I suppose that's what we all are really, isn't it. Hubs from which radiate spokes in all directions.
What is it? six, seven, degrees of separation? Well, I recently reconnected with an old college chum on Facebook from 32-33 years ago. After viewing his pictures of him hobnobbing with Willie Nelson at his recent birthday party, I realized there's one degree of separation between me, Willie Nelson, Billy Bob Thorton, and Woody Harrelson (all who were in attendance and hobnobbing with my old chum).
Yep, we're all hubs. Anyone seen my cap? (Ugh. Sorry.)
abol: Hey, great to hear from you. Assume you had a good/safe return trip home with the doggers.
I liked your "tuning my receptiveness and allowing myself to witness the consciousness that is universe at play." I wished I were better tuned because when I experience a true synchronicity, it gives me pause to think, "Wow! What was THAT about." I'm sure, better tuned, we'd all experience far more of those.
And, I have absolutely no idea how you "see" these things (that %20 after my Huey link), but thanks! (I think it's working now.)
Also thanks for the links to the vids. I've watched the first two and am halfway thru the third. I have new appreciation for having lived during "planet Earth's *golden age*.
Some years ago I read "Global Brain" in which the author likened the firing up of the internet (still in its early stage back then) to the human brain with its dendrites and synaptic impulses awakening a global consciousness.
So maybe instead of a hub, Dada's is a dendrite. Maybe someday before the end of Earth's golden age, with better telescopes, we'll discover we're but a molecule in DNA double helix? Or, worse, a failing synaptic junction in the brain of an aging Alzeimer's patient.
in firefox all you need to do is highlight a selection on any page you're viewing, ctrl-click it (rightclick), choose View Selection Source. This works on mac or pc with firefox as it ships with what is called DOM inspecter that supplies this functionality.
as for the premise you offer for the Global brain, i can certainly see that. interpenetration of connections would, i think, be an apt description of those plexuses that form as the function (chemical, energetic or informational transfer) they embody develops.
i had a waking dream the other day where those images that had so enthralled me began to overlay on each other, and the consciousness that each embodied fluctuated with each overlayment and eventually merged... iam unsure of the duration of that waking dream but whether it was only a 10th of a second or minutes it was very powerful. maybe it's time to adjust the medications, again.
i gotta say, since the 'better' digital tv came along i have not watched any tv. not only has my observational keenness improved, the usually negative emotional trigger load to which i subject myself has been reduced correspondingly.
i loves me some TEDtv!
Well done, friend. Four years IS a long time when so much destruction has taken place in the body politik. Your insight and friendship have meant a lot to so many of us over the years. Want to hazard a guess what our lives will be like in another four years?
abol: Thanks for the Firefox tip. "Geez, where's the box that browser came in? ...hmmm, I probably threw out the instructions that came with the box." (;~0)
TEDtv is certainly an interesting site. Plenty there to capture one's imagination, to ponder.
As for the new digital TV, it's win some, lose some. With the new converter box, we lost CBS before the changeover. But man, can I pull in the stations over in Mexico. That's because my antenna's facing straight south instead of the mountain where local channel towers are. (It's just a matter of rotating my antenna a few degress but with the square mast in a round base it's gonna take some drilling most likely instead of a simple loosen, rotate, tighten, but the urgency with which I approach this hints at its low priority for us.)
As for your >1 image overlays into
multi-leveled combinations: that gave me chilling flashbacks to my days as an art student and my reluctance to think it more than two dimensions which manifested in my grades in sculpture, ceramics and metals, I suppose. Is it possible I could have done better on meds? (~g) Obviously, my chance of escaping (whilst still breathing) are nil, so seeped in but three dimensions am I.
But all this talk of consciousness, losing track of time, and the book Supernatural I've been reading has me looking up old Terrence McKenna talks on YouTube. I suppose McKenna's transcendence has him really feeling enlightened these days -- the bastard!
got that back-of-the-scalp twitchy did ya?
if the meds you had gone on had had the effect of shaking the absolute control of theDoer/reality_hall_monitor/patternmatcher and let the observer/co-creator have a run, you coulda been a contented calder... hell you still can, ya ken? (sorry i have pathologic alliterative syndrome mediated with a near flood of stream of conscious free association - i think it's my scotch roots)
i doubt McKenna's much concerned about stage of development at this point... soon maybe... maybe he'll do the recycled bodhisattva dance after 2012 and the changeover to the next level of global consciousness...
this is by far the largest mckenna repository i have run across in more than 10 years looking
Terence McKenna Audio
Terence McKenna Video
Terrence McKenna's Timewave Zero and probably an older version of that sw here TimeWave Zero/
...stay away from the Purple Acid!
eProf: Thanks for the kind words. Whew, as to what might happen in the next four years - ???? - I wish I was more clairvoyant.
But maybe we needn't stress quite as hard to come up with something. Maybe we only need to guess the next 3 1/2 years. That may be all we have left if the Maya were right, huh?
Post a Comment