We camp along a long-abandonned strip-mine, the perfect setting for our post-industrail lifestyle. It's me and the boys and Holly. We take an hour or two to visit the relatives and shop for the essentials, food food food and beer. We reach our destination around three loaded down, it takes two trips to get it all down. The campsite is just as we remembered it. The firehole has a few more random metal scraps from autumnal highschool scavenging and the chairs are partially dissembled for last-ditch fire scraps. Otherwise, it's camp sweet camp. We haul enough wood for a week long excursion, the forest is ripe for its first plundering of the new season, whole trees lie dead standing at our fingertips. I wondered as we plucked entire hulks from the ground if we were acting our part out in nature, clearing the ground of deadfall, making room for new trees to grow, or if at this point in history it was hard to justify even small-time logging operations. Back to a point I made in an earlier entry, it is easy to justify almost any action as genetically inspired; the reasoning that animals do it so it can't be all that bad, that somehow it's all quite natural. Seems to me that in current times your place in the world is based far more on location and environment than any genetic inclinations. Especially regarding tribal animals it is imperative to always weigh an individual advantage against a societal one, in other words, is this decision based on personal survival or survival of children and entire species. Maybe were supposed to work toward maximum fitness, not for ourselves, but for our entire alive environment.

We ate very well. A little too well. I ate so much I had to take a mile-long jog in the morning to pep up my engines, burn out some congealed grease. It was pleasureable too. I love garnering pleasure from my body through using it. It really likes to be used. It likes to be stetched and active, and to grow stronger. It's such a great system that you're rewarded with not only excellent health, but also an overwhelming sense of immediate joy and well-expended energy. It's sad that we're all getting fat, we've forgotten how good it feels to move, because it's so much easier to get happy eating. As I type I can feel my body yearning for a deep sleep to knit back muscles into stronger formations, it knows just which ones by how hard I used them. I should keep it up and get in shape. Stay away rain and let me get my bike out!

Oh god, Holly's mama was there, and she's just the best. So far she's made me three pecan pies, need I say more??? She decided to come out and eat dinner with us on Sunday-she ended up sleeping-over, tucked into Holly's tent with Cintra and the dogs. She's so funny, and it's so great when she tells a story and the girls take over side stories, all about life in small-town Smethport, PA. Hilarious.

I wanna talk about Chemistry and String theory for a minute too. About restructuring the mind to accept subatomic theory. Just think, wall to wall fuzzy guitar-strings! Must pee though... K, I'm back. Dislaimer for any who may understand a lot more about this shit than I: I have only taken a couple of chemistry/physics classes in my life, but I've read a slew of books about it. So chemistry tries to describe life through the interactions of molecules. They form bonds with one another and release various forms of energy, their combinations form everything in this room and the universe(?). Standard beginner models include circles on rings orbitting an inner core (think solar system) or you use their atomic initials, little dots representing electrons, and dashes between signifying bonds. It is a very useful model and it can be used to accurately predict real-world reactions. Along comes quantum theory, which cuts atoms to shreds and dissects the innards: quarks, neutrinos, etc. We find whole new properties (like spin and color), basically a new system for understanding chemistry at a primal(?) le
ve
l. We know we're on the right track because we can now "see" many of the predicted particles and their behavior through experiments (with telescopes and particle accelerators).

A paradigm shift is in the process, and these are the best times for revolution. If everything is the rippling of energy strings, operating under the uncertainty principle, flitting through space and anti-space, than isn't our chemical system a bit antiquated. Learning has many hurtles and a major one is counterintuition. If something is learned and then must be relearned under a new paradigm much energy is wasted in the unlearning. It is much better to incorporate new knowledge into the learning pool. God this is getting way to over the top, I sound like I'm preaching to a convention of college science professors. I still have more to say about the relationship of philosophy to science but will save it for a less exhasusted audience. Stop reading and go contemplate the endless beauty of an iris, they won't be here long.

Paul has changed it so you can email up to five attached images into your journal. Here is a pretty awesome example. YO!

thoug my head wonders if it should be thanking you for the pounding it's experiencing now. :) Went to Presba, a bar I had heretofore not even heard of, which was cool and played extrememly cool music (we walked in and were greeted with Joga by Bjork). The pizza was yummy yummy yummy. The band at the Square was pretty neat rock and rolly, I didn't really get to see them, as is usually the case. Camping is today. I am very excited. I love to camp. First time in the new summer it has to be wonderful.

So I've had these hives for over a week now, and am getting really annoyed. The symptoms are that I get itchy somewhere and if I scratch at all I get hives in the shape of the scratches, if I don't itch, nothing. I am somewhat prone to hives, if a cat or dog bites/scratches me or if I roll around in grass for an extended period I get hives, but his seemed a little extreme. So, I decide to look it u[ on the internet and find that my "condition" has a name: dermatographism. It sounds like tis could get annoying. They say that it can last for a week or two or for the rest of your life. Fun. There is no known cure unless the source of the irritation can be identified (which is usually very difficult) and histamine-blockers have a mild chance of preventing outbreaks if taken everyday. I guess I have to pray I have the week or two variety. They don't really have long term consequences or anything they are just annoying as fuck. Like I'm at work and scratch my face beofre I can stop myself and have an ugly red mark for an hour, I feel like a leper.

Anyways, the disturbing coincidence happened when I was looking up the disease and there was a picture of what it looked like:



Fucking bizzare right! Freaked me the hell out. Anyways, feel sorry for the leper and now when you see me with disgusting red blotches all over you know I don't have scabies or AIDS or something.

First-off, I don't know the guy at all. He is probably really swell and making some neat science-art. But, I have to say that I am not sure that just anyone should be able to play with strange bacterias (are claims of Anthrax true?). However well meaning the person is, they are not all benign substance; I wouldn't want my neighbor making art with explosives next door either. So, while I feel for him that he is going through some horribly scary shit, I can't say that he shouldn't have expected it. Of course, the scale of what happened is ridiculous. Cordoning an entire neighborhood off and carting away his dead wife's body was probably not necessary (though as Paul says, in some cases of public safety it is probably better that the Buffalo police not handle it and specialized teams be brought in). I also am pretty sure that he won't get anything like a fair trial and that he is probably suffering more than is necessary because of our draconian new terror laws, and that sucks.