Cat Stevens In The Real World

Now that I’ve lost everything to you
You say you want to start something new
And it’s breaking my heart you’re leaving
Baby, I’m grieving

But if you want to leave, take good care
Hope you have a lot of nice things to wear
But then a lot of nice things turn bad out there

Oh, baby, baby, it’s a wild world
It’s hard to get by just upon a smile
Oh, baby, baby, it’s a wild world
And I’ll always remember you like a child, girl

You know I’ve seen a lot of what the world can do
And it’s breaking my heart in two
Because I never want to see you sad, girl
Don’t be a bad girl

But if you want leave, take good care
Hope you make a lot of nice friends out there
But just remember there’s a lot of bad and beware

Oh, baby, baby, it’s a wild world
It’s hard to get by just upon a smile
Oh, baby, baby, it’s a wild world
And I’ll always remember you like a child, girl

“One time I broke up with a guy,” Joanne said. “When I told him I didn’t want to see him any more, he took out his guitar and played and sang that Cat Stevens song, ‘Wild World.’”

“That’s a cool song,” I said.

“Yeah,” Joanne said.

“That was a sweet thing for the guy to do,” I said.

“Yeah,” Joanne said.

We looked at each other for a moment.

“I bet you just laughed at him,” I said. “He’s being sweet and singing you a cool song and I bet you laughed right in his face.”

“No, I didn’t laugh in his face,” Joanne said, looking hurt. “You think you know me so well. You don't know me that well.” She pouted.

I just stared at her.

Joanne giggled. She said, “I waited till I got outside then I laughed.”

I nodded.

Joanne laughed, remembering. “It was so fucking funny,” she said, and fell against me, laughing. “I broke his heart and he sang me that sappy Cat Stevens song. I laughed so hard I had to sit down against the curb by my car.”

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The Difference Between Flowers And People

“Where Do The Children Play?”

Last week when I wrote The Empty Lot Entanglement I very much wanted to embed this video.

I talked myself out of it, however, because I wanted that post to be a personal statement and I knew some people clicking over and seeing “Yusuf Islam” would think I intended some political statement.

For people who don’t know, there used to be an amazing songwriter and performer named Cat Stevens. At the peak of his fame Stevens gave away his guitars and converted to Islam and devoted his life to charity under the name Yusuf Islam. That was his personal statement.

But he wrote many incredible songs before he abandoned the music business and now and then he comes out of retirement and sings some of his old songs and sometimes new songs.

This is one of his old songs.

This song was a good question almost forty years ago when it appeared on one of the greatest albums every released, “Tea for the TIllerman.”

If there were children any more this would still be a good question.

I first heard this song when I was a child. I heard it again when I met Cathy.

Even though there are no more children, it’s still a good question.

The Alaska Cauldron

The politics of breaking things apart,
what is sometimes called social alchemy,
would not heat what is broken already.
Fragmenting one-to-many is its art.

And the opposite. Many cells, one heart.
Toil and trouble bubble for all to see.
Fire some things imprisons, some things sets free.
The start is the end. The end is the start.

Assassinating a hated actor,
the father of an estranged family,
only breaks what is already broken.

But the beloved Queen, the mother factor,
the heat from her breasts and her fierce mercy
gunned down, and the word “Chaos” is spoken.

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There is a lot of talk on the internet about
President Obama being in danger. Everybody
from Gore Vidal to Lyndon LaRouche seems to have
warned that the President’s life is in jeopardy
from extremists.

But modern American politics seems
to be about destabilization. The Left
just tolerates the President and the Right
hates him. Assassinating the President
doesn’t seem to destabilize anything.

But the Right loves Sarah Palin.
And the Right is well-armed and
already perceives itself as oppressed.
The Right was bringing weapons to
townhall meetings. The Right
is ready, even eager, to take its
fight to the streets. If some political
force wants to destabilize America,
it appears to me Sarah Palin is in much
greater danger than the President.

*

Sunday is the anniversary of
the Kennedy assassination,
the Killing-of-the-King.

Post-Christian Party Talk

Recently I read an essay (in Newsweek, this one: “The End of Christian America,” by Jon Meacham) which purports to address the question: “Is America becoming a post-Christian nation?”

“Post-Christian” is a hot-button phrase lately among people interested in religion and culture and I have thoughts on the topic myself. I’m not going to post about “post-Christian America” today because I’m trying to work my thoughts into some kind of entertaining arrangement. But I want to make a couple of points about what passes for pop culture discussion.

It can be tricky. It’s a good idea to pay attention and not take anything too seriously.

A few years ago a famous film director and a famous writer did a commentary track for a famous movie they made together. During their discussion, they agreed their movie was a “post-modern horror film” but when they tried to explain what “post-modern” meant they puttered around and ended up laughing and admitting they had no particular idea what the phrase meant but used it because it’s a phrase that sounds smart and everyone more or less knows it means something about breaking with traditions.

Good enough for Hollywood use. (It was Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson talking about “Scream.”)

A lot of writing I’ve read about “post-Christian” is pretty similar. It’s like party talk, people just trying to be current without even attempting buttoned-down thinking.

But there is also tricky writing in a kind of devious way, too. I suspect a lot of tricky writing these days isn’t the writer consciously being devious. I suspect a lot of tricky writing these days is just adult writers acting like teenagers trying to finagle their parents into buying them expensive jeans or a new muffler for their car. It’s a sort of “say anything” approach to talking where the issue isn’t communication but something like expression, because basically that’s all kids have to do, just express themselves and then it’s the parents’ job to be all loving and giving and caring. That’s kind of what adults do now. They just express themselves and expect their friends or bosses or—in the case of writers—their readers to appreciate their feat of expression and love and respect them for it.

It’s the twenty-first century. There are no children any more and there are no adults any more. There are just people with power and people without power and the people without power are forever calculating how to acquire power and how to appease and amuse the people with power.

People have become post-human in a post-modern sort of way.

In a post-Christian sort of way, too.

The Newsweek essay is an example of a silly bit of writing. It starts with discussing post-Christian America and morphs quietly into a discussion of post-religion America as if the concept of religion were the same as one particular religion, and as if nobody would notice that it is easier to explain away the re-defining of a generality than it is to dismiss the re-defining of a particular concrete.

The Newsweek essay starts by discussing the possibility of post-Christian America and toward the end comes up with this:

America, then, is not a post-religious society—and cannot be as long as there are people in it, for faith is an intrinsic human impulse. The belief in an order or a reality beyond time and space is ancient and enduring. "All men," said Homer, "need the gods." The essential political and cultural question is to what extent those gods—or, more accurately, a particular generation's understanding of those gods—should determine the nature of life in a given time and place.

The issue, then, isn’t about sin, salvation and Jesus. The issue is just the “impulse” to believe in something “beyond time and space.”

There you go. Newsweek says America isn’t becoming post-Christian at all. The issue isn’t whether Man is fallen or whether God wants Man to be saved. The issue is whether or not people believe in, say, Zeus and his sister-wife Hera, or Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones, or, I suppose, Scientology.

At some point I’m going to do something with the topic of post-Christian America. But I’m taking my time because I want to say something that is better than saying nothing at all.

Jenny Paid Her Respects At Sara’s Grave

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The Zombie Issue Destroyed Their Friendship


Sara’s Zombie Quest Disgusted Jenny


Zombie Sara Terrorized Jenny From The Start


Zombie Sara Made Jenny Question Their Past


Zombie Sara’s Zombie Urges Destroyed Her World


*


This is the end of the cartoon version of the story of Jenny and Zombie Sara.

Jenny lives. Sara dies. Sara actually dies twice but that’s how zombie stories work.

I’ve got a lot—I mean, a lot—of background to this stuff with Jenny and Sara. Lots of other people die too and a few other people also live. But for the cartoons I just looked at six scenes of Jenny and Sara confronting each other.

Maybe some day I’ll get a chance to come back to this story and explain why Sara wanted to die and come back to life, and why Sara had such a contentious relationship with Jenny.

This for me was one of the most fun projects I’ve ever worked on here at Impossible Kisses. It was fun doing these six scenes which involved so much backstory (at least in my mind) and drawing everything using just a few pencils, some Pigma markers, a set of Bic Mark-It markers and one Prismacolor marker (I used a Prismacolor Deco Peach for flesh tone midtones).

I may have more to say about Prismacolor markers in another post. In a weird way Prismacolor markers have played a role in my life almost for as long as I can remember. Right now out in the real world Prismacolor seems to be fighting a marketplace battle with Copic. I actually used a Copic Skin White for the flesh tones in the first cartoon, “The Zombie Issue Destroyed Their Friendship,” but when I realized I wanted to do a whole series I switched to Prismacolor. I think Copic markers are better in almost every way than Prismacolor markers but for me Prismacolor markers are something like magic. I’ll talk about that someday in another post.

The Empty Lot Entanglement

I feel entangled
with all the empty lots I’ve walked through
places where children played
crickets and grasshoppers and spiders and butterflies
mice and rabbits and sparrows and blackbirds and hawks
weeds and wild flowers
discarded telephone poles
stones and boulders
puddles of rain water

I feel crushed flat myself
like all the empty lots that have been plowed up
filled in and leveled and paved over
turned into concrete and asphalt parking lots
wood and brick and steel and glass buildings
homes and businesses

I feel lonely
terrified
like the few empty lots that remain
open surrounded by closed
places where people throw garbage
metal things turning to rust

I feel entangled
and it’s only the presence of the past
places where children played
something like memory
permeating everything
out beyond the stars
deep through the center of the Earth
that allows me to continue walking
over and through what used to be empty lots

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Empty Lots


Impossible Kisses: The Empty Lot Behind My House

“Out Of This Door Might Come Something”

The Large Hadron Collider is ready to start smashing particles together again, equipment, the laws of nature, and the Almighty permitting. The $9 billion particle accelerator has been fully repaired after a short circuit put it out of action for more than a year, and should be ready to roll come Christmastime. Scientists have begun firing protons around one section, once again eagerly awaiting proof of the existence of the Higgs boson or "God particle," although a few argue that the short circuit may foreshadow further problems, including sabotage—from the future.

The creation of the Higgs boson may be so“abhorrent to nature” that it would ripple back in time to destroy itself like a time traveler killing his own grandfather, a pair of physicists argued recently. They suggested the failure of the collider and earlier projects might even be proof of the existence of God. Some others suggest that the project could spawn planet-destroying black holes. Just as scarily, the Los Angeles Times notes, a physicist working on the project was arrested for allegedly having al-Qaeda links last month.

Large Hadron Collider is ready to roll
after a year of repairs

A top boffin at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) says that the titanic machine may possibly create or discover previously unimagined scientific phenomena, or "unknown unknowns" - for instance "an extra dimension".

"Out of this door might come something, or we might send something through it," said Sergio Bertolucci, who is Director for Research and Scientific Computing at CERN, briefing reporters including the Reg at CERN HQ earlier this week.

The LHC, built inside a 27-km circular subterranean tunnel deep beneath the Franco-Swiss border outside Geneva, functions like a sort of orbital motorway for extremely high-speed hadrons - typically either protons or lead ions.

The differences are, firstly, that the streams of particles are moving at velocities within a whisker of light speed - such that each stream has as much energy in it as a normal car going at 1000mph. Secondly, the beams are arranged in such fashion that the two streams swerve through one another occasionally, which naturally results in huge numbers of incredibly violent head-on collisions.

These collisions are sufficiently violent that they are expected to briefly create conditions similar to those obtaining countless aeons ago, not long after the Big Bang, when the entire universe was still inconceivably small - it was smaller than a proton for quite some time, seemingly, still with all the stuff that nowadays makes up all the supra-enormity of space and galaxies and so forth packed in somehow.

Naturally, some extremely strange phenomena are to be expected when one mangles the very fabric of space-time itself in this fashion. Various eccentric nutballs have claimed that this would doom humanity in one fashion or another; perhaps converting the entire Earth, everything on it and possibly the rest of the universe too into "strangelet soup", monopole mulligatawny or some other sort of frightful sub-particulate blancmange or custard.

It has also been suggested that cack-handed boffins at the LHC might inadvertently call into being a miniature black hole and carelessly drop this into the centre of the Earth, rather irritatingly causing the planet to implode. It's certainly to be hoped that the button marked "Call Black Hole Into Being" on the control board has some kind of flip-down cover over it.

Obviously all that's utter rubbish. But some boffins have speculated that black holes might alternatively act as spacewarp wormhole portals into alternate universes, or something. This would seem to chime with Bertolucci's remarks this week on hyperdimensional "doors" out of which might come unspecified "somethings".

Anyone who has watched a TV, read any sci-fi or seen any movies will be well aware that hyperdimensional spacewarp wormhole portals don't normally lead to anything boring like empty space, parallel civilisations where humanity lives in peace and harmony or anything like that.

Rather, it seems a racing cert that we're looking here at an imminent visit from a race of carnivorous dinosaur-men, the superhuman clone hive-legions of some evil genetic queen-empress, infinite polypantheons of dark nega-deities imprisoned for aeons and hungering to feast upon human souls, a parallel-history victorious Nazi globo-Reich or something of that type.

We took the matter up with Dr Mike Lamont, a control-room boffin at the LHC.

"We're hoping to see supersymmetry and extra dimensions," he confirmed.

Pressed on the matter of doors through which something might come, as hinted at by Bertolucci, Lamont rather elliptically said "well, he's a theorist", before recommending the book Warped Passages by physicist Lisa Randall. This explores ways in which extra-dimensional space and entities might interact with our own. It uses among others the example of how a sphere moving in 3D space would appear to someone living on a single 2D plane-space - that is as a mysterious circle suddenly blossoming into existence, growing, perhaps moving about and then shrinking down and vanishing again.

"There's no maths in it," added Lamont encouragingly, having assessed the intellectual level of the Reg news team with disconcerting percipience.

Summarising, then, it appears that we might be in for some kind of invasion by spontaneously swelling and shrinking spherical or wheel-shaped creatures - something on the order of the huge rumbling stone ball from Indiana Jones - able to move in and out of our plane at will. Soon the cities of humanity will lie in smoking ruins, shattered by the Attack of the Teleporting Juggernaut-tyrants from the Nth Dimension.

Dr Bertolucci later got in touch to confirm that yes indeed, there would be an "open door", but that even with the power of the LHC at his disposal he would only be able to hold it open "a very tiny lapse of time, 10-26 seconds, [but] during that infinitesimal amount of time we would be able to peer into this open door, either by getting something out of it or sending something into it.

"Of course," adds Bertolucci, "after this tiny moment the door would again shut, bringing us back to our 'normal' four dimensional world ... It would be a major leap in our vision of Nature, although of no practcal use (for the time being, at least). And of course [there would be] no risk to the stability of our world."

'Something may come through'
dimensional 'doors: CERN

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The Windmills Of PHYSICS TODAY


This Is Lisa Randall. Not Lisa Randall