Wild Monkeys!

A lot of stuff on here is friends-only. Let me know if you'd like to be added and I'll see what I can do.

The '80s should've been far more like this:




(h/t to Ducky for the song, which led me to the video on a video-discovery-rich night)

I've got five briefs and one misdemeanor trial left to finish in this big work push before the Country Fair, and then I'll be onsite for 13 days. I'm not going to be online a whole lot during that period (through July 14). I look forward to catching up with everyone thereafter -- but most of all, if you can come to the Fair, do it!

I have been more outraged by the brutal, senseless murder of Dr. George Tiller than by any number of atrocities in the world over the last several years. It cuts to the quick of what I believe in. His blood is not just on the hands of the killer and his immediate ideological allies, but also on hundreds of politicians' hands: the hands of those who have fought to marginalize and ghettoize women's reproductive health care generally and abortion services specifically. They created the climate that led to this killing. Many of them are, with whatever crocodile tears, celebrating it tonight. They are anathema to me.

Thanks for your good thoughts and wishes. Dalilah is improving.

The 30 worst unicorn tattoos.

Credit to Ian McCullough and Andrew Sullivan for the link.

Our beloved Dalilah, aka Pokey-Paw, a Chartreux cat, is ill with a severe bladder infection, right on the heels of another one a few weeks back. She's fifteen and we've had many health scares over the last six years, so we're certainly sensitive to the possibility of saying goodbye to her this time. But subcutaneous fluids and antibiotics have restored her appetite, which had been scarily absent, so we'll see. This time we have the complexity of having a three-year-old who's lately been learning a lot about the natural world, including death, in the picture. On the other hand, it could be a really healthy, positive thing for her, handled correctly. Anyway, we're all just trying to keep Dalilah alive, or, failing that, comfortable.

Update: she is doing much better, thankfully.

Thanks for keeping it real, Reed and Reedies. I was able to attend as much of Renn Fayre as I ever do as a parent, and to enjoy my retirement from Meatsmoke leadership. Great job, next generations of smokers and Renn Fayre staff! I had a super time and I hope all of you who attended did, too.

Thanks to paraleipsis for the link.

Happy Renn Fayre! Happy Beltane! Happy festival season!

Was anyone else influenced as a child by Stanley Kiesel's The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids? For some reason it came back to me today. I commend it to your attention.

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(no transcription available)

( poem hidden on request due to length )

From cooking and hosting a gourmet dinner party for two other couples and their total of three kids, to (earlier) watching all those kids and our own two (including elaborate kid painting project!) with one and then two of the other parents while D and the remaining two parents were at a spa getting massages and soaking and saunaing and so forth, to going running for the first time in forever, to helping a prosecutor-recently-turned-defense-lawyer acquaintance work on one of her first motions to suppress statements, to having gotten a bit of extra sleep in the morning, today was a good day.

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“[funny but ultimately annoying robotranscription removed]” Transcribed by: bonobo23

My beloved big black bicycle, Charovnitsa (Russian for Enchantress/Sorceress/Witch), was stolen from my back yard, evidently last night. Because the windstorm (the December one, not the most recent one) had blown our side gate down, she was visible, and I had glaringly omitted to lock her up. She was my bike since my previous bike was stolen from my Reed house in the Summer of 1993. We had many adventures together. I am sad to see her go out like that.

(explanation)

OK, here's a new book meme by me. List the 20-odd books you have personally read that have been most influential in your life. By personally read, I mean that we aren't talking about indirect effects of famous books you haven't read. By influential, I mean intellectually, spiritually, politically, aesthetically, or any other way you might be influenced (e.g., books that have shaped habits or hobbies of yours). I'm not referring to your favorite stories qua stories -- plenty of mine are omitted from the list below. The question here is lasting effect.

* * *

bonobo23's most influential books (alphabetically by author's name)

David Arora, Mushrooms Demystified
T. Coraghessan Boyle, The Tortilla Curtain
Susie Bright, Susie Bright's Sexual Reality, SexWise, and The Sexual State of the Union
Edward Espe Brown, The Tassajara Cookbook
Pat Califia, Public Sex
Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia and Ecotopia Emerging
Edward De Grazia, Girls Lean Back Everywhere
Nancy Friday, My Secret Garden, Forbidden Flowers, Men in Love, and Women on Top
Joel Garreau, The Nine Nations of North America
Stephen Gaskin, Amazing Dope Tales
Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
Robert Heinlein, Friday
Ursula LeGuin, Always Coming Home (probably my favorite single book)
Markos Moulitsas Zúniga and Jerome Armstrong, Crashing the Gates
George Orwell, 1984
Alexei Panshin, Rite of Passage
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma
Ram Dass, Be Here Now
Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume
Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars, Blue Mars, and Green Mars (definitely my favorite series)
Kim Stanley Robinson, Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below Zero, and Sixty Days and Counting
Spider Robinson, Mindkiller and Time Pressure
Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Romauer Becker, and Ethan Becker, et al., The Joy of Cooking
Sasha Shulgin and Ann Shulgin, PIHKAL and TIHKAL
Gary Snyder, No Nature
Starhawk, The Spiral Dance
Marco Vassi, The Stoned Apocalypse
Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger
Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, Illuminatus!
Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

Now to undo Prop 8.