conversation/Rainbow Waters of China

V. Oooh, how mysterious. I suppose it's something for hauling stone? Out of a quarry? But wait! What is that long hose thing that's being held up by three little beige benches!? Mysteries abound!

J. I think it's a run off from the plant into the hole. But I'm not really sure, I didn't get any closer to the water it was creepy.

V. Yeah, looks kind of creepy and maybe dangerous to go out too close to the edge there.

J. The water was all frosty and glazed over but some times the color was a little odd. It was quiet like something might come bursting out of it and gobble you up.

V. Oh hoho. I know what you mean... That suspicious color that looks a little too chemical... might harbor some radioactive beastie with glowing tentacles...!

J. Yeah, exactly that odd color. Like the bright green lakes in the middle of nowhere... I'll have to stop and take pictures the next time I see one of those. I think the home owners have made made lakes and add chemicals to them to keep the algae from growing. They are the oddest color.

V. Yeah, I think they have lots of those in Florida! Reminds me of a news snippet I saw about blue water pollution in China from blue-jeans factories... Hmmm...

J. Is the water the same color from the pollution or does it just tie in?

V. ust ties in, I guess. The water turns blue, like jeans...

J. And then when you start getting into colored jeans you get some really interesting stuff.

V. Mmm, yes... The "rainbow waters" of China. We could make a whole tourist trade out of it.

J. Ahahha, the new eight wonder of the word. Go for a swim and you might find yourself cured and able to walk again or you might find that you have a few extra feet and three legs instead of two. It's a gamble and so many people would go for it.

This conversation was conducted on DeviantArt between my friend vanilla-vanilla and myself krazysidhe. For it and other conversations feel free to hunt around, we hope you’ve enjoyed today’s installment.

conversation/The Ranks of the Ghost Squirrels

V. Squirrel? Looks like ghost of squirrel past.

J. Ah you know how those ghostly squirrels are, they just never got away and they are always chattering but you can't quiet hear them. So most people dismiss the noise as nothing but really... it's the ghosts of all those squirrels that get run over every year, they come back with a vengeance. But unfortunately their imaginary nuts, just really don't have much impact on the people or the cars that they throw them at. Thus you end up with a lot of frustrated vengeful squirrels. Eventually they get rather tired of running around neighborhoods and play chicken with the cars that killed them in the first place--after all dead ghostly squirrels really aren't that much smarter then living squirrels--they migrate slowly into the more wooded areas. They live in communes together in the forests and eventually one by one they fade. However, there is always more of them to replace the others--rather like the rabbits. After all they breed like bunnies there are always more of them... living or dead!

V. Oho, this is why there always seem to be more and more squirrels everywhere! Like my back yard, where they keep forgetting where they buried the nuts, so they have to look everywhere... Maybe you'll run across a squirrel commune when you have your camera. After you take that picture of new batteries.

J. Ah but did you know the real reason that they forgot where their nuts where? That's because all of the ghost squirrels, confuse the living squirrels so much that they can't find their nuts. Because the dead ones know where they are but they are so frustrated that they can't eat the nuts--they can't even dig them up poor things. That they usually decide that if they can't have the nuts then those who can actually eat them sure as hell aren't getting a hold of any nuts.

V. Oh! I saw one yesterday afternoon. I was driving, and this tiny little juvenile squirrel darted into the middle of a busy street, then sat looking wildly about and turning in circles as cars zoomed in all directions, and ghost squirrels tried to pummel it with nuts...

J. Poor little squirrel, he so did not know what hit him. I can just hear all of the ghost squirrels cackling from the side walks. Because after they're dead they are much smarter and quiet a bit nastier. At least most of them. I'm sure somewhere there is the few lonely little ghost squirrels who try and do good but their voices aren't heard over the chatter of the others.

The second photograph has been edited by vanilla-vanilla. This conversation was carried out via DeviantArt, by my friend vanilla-vanilla and myself. Feel free to browse around this conversation and for others which may or may not appear here at a future date. I hope your day/evening is a good one.

conversation/The Pine Tree Guru's and Urban Foraging

V. Something nice and "crispy" about this picture, too. Hair of the beast that ate most of the thing that now lies beneath the snow?

J. Ah but you see, it's vestiges of the weeds from the back of the creek monsters. In the snow and the ice he can make it just that far away from the creek. However, what he didn't realize is that he sluffed off some of his concealing creek weed on the fence along the way.
Or perhaps it's simply the little creatures who live in fences. They snuck down to the creak in the brightest light of the day--for that's what creek monsters are slowest of course at least in winter--and carefully plucked creek weed from the back of the creek monster so as to frame him for that which lies beneath the snow. However, little do they know what all that lies beneath the snow is dead grass and nothing at all incriminating. So, instead of framing the creek monsters as they wish, because he enjoys snacking on the little creatures who live in fences when he can't get hiker.

V. Ah, your folklore is getting richer, now populated with more little creatures... with ulterior motives!

J. Conflicting interests. But the poor little guys who live in the fence really must talk to the air headed creatures who live in the pine trees. You know sniffing those pine fumes all day, that's really the best way to figure out what it's all about.

V. !! I love it. Wow... Pine fumes. Hmm, reminds me of teenage years... Hmmm. I feel a picture coming on...

J. Climbing pine trees and getting the sap stuck all over your hands and never being able to get it off. Though it did smell rather nice.

V. Ah, haven't done that for years. Near where I lived as a kid was a row of 5 or 6 enormous fir trees and we'd often climb into them, way up near the top, where you sway back and forth in the wind. Sometimes pretty scary; great views.

J. Yeah, pine trees can be great. I used to climb mango trees over seas, they had a similar sappy problem. But when left they could get ginormous, and made the best climbing trees. Sometimes on the biggest ones we couldn't get up the trucks so we'd pull down the lower branches and climb up them. Mango's aren't overly strong but they bend quiet a lot before they break.

V. Oh, now I have to find a mango tree to climb!

J. You really should. Though I'm not sure how much luck you will have finding one in this country.

V. Yeah, I don't think I've seen one, but maybe in Hawaii...

J. I think you would in Hawaii, though I can't remember seeing one when I was there. That would be closer to the right climate though. Maybe it's like most fruit trees they don't tend to grow them in the cities or populated area's because of the fruit mess. I haven't been much outside of Honolulu, in a while.

V. Heheh, yes, the fruit mess. People around the neighborhood here tend to have orange and lemon and olive trees, and then instead of eating the fruit, they let it rain down and rot on the ground... I had an apricot tree that died a few years back, but when it fruited, it gave the best apricots in the whole wide world.

J. Yeah, I never understood the idea of having a fruit tree and not at least eating or using some of it. I know a number of people around here who have apple trees and they do that. We had a neighbor who had one and we'd made tones of apple sauce every year because she didn't want the apples. I can understand having more then you can use yourself but to just let it all sit there.

V. I also have an apple tree, in front by the driveway. The fruit isn't very good really, and we only eat a few each year... But not because it falls and rots. It never gets as far as falling or rotting. People come by in the middle of the night and steal it! Once last summer, I woke up in the middle of the night to some sound out front, and when I cracked the blinds to look, it was interesting. For half an hour I watched a woman with a flashlight going around the tree, picking apples and stuffing them into a bag. When it was full, she departed. Another time in the dead of night, I saw a family of people stop their car, all jump out, pick a bunch of apples, then pile back in and drive off. Jeez-o. If they really need the apples, they're welcome to them!

J. Urban foraging. There is a map floating around of this city and where the fruit trees and berry buses are in town. Someone on one of the groups I'm on was complaining about urban foraging, that because of the amount of it, people aren't leaving anything for the local wild life to eat.

V. Wow. I feel like a total dolt! It never even occurred to me. I guess it goes on here, too: [link] I guess my "old home town" Berkeley is a hot-bed of this activity. Who knew? Ha ha, maybe this is why all the 'possums have disappeared. But the squirrels and crows seem to do well here with all the oranges. The back fence is always littered with orange peels dropped by plump squirrels who eat the innards and leave the husk.

J. *chuckles* It's rather interesting. For instance I wouldn't have thought about all of the smaller urban animals that rely on that as a food source. I was reading a conversation going on between some of the members of the local Permaculture group (email), [link] [link]

The second photograph has been edited by vanilla-vanilla. This conversation was carried out via DeviantArt, by my friend vanilla-vanilla and myself. Feel free to browse around this conversation and for others which may or may not appear here at a future date. I hope your day/evening is a good one.

conversation/ Hatch

Image Note: So, I couldn't resist. I found this on my campus walk and well... It really rather does look like an Alien Egg, sitting on a stump just waiting to be hatched.


V. Wow! What a wonderful surprise it will be when it hatches! (Or maybe we don't want to be hanging around?)

J. *sits on the ground in front of it and starts changing* Hatch, Hatch, Hatch, Hatch, Hatch, Hatch...

V. Yes, chant hard... But don't sit too close!

J. I think I shall beat my hands on my knees and make faces at it.

V. Oh! In my crystal ball, I see... an indie film. The Dangerous Pastimes of Weavers... Make sure it doesn't have a mother lurking in the trees.

J. With numerous musical numbers and really bad subtitles as of course the whole thing is in French.

V. Ah, lovely. Sounds like my kind of film, sort of...

J. It has potential but will it be realized or not? That remains to be seen.

V. Maybe someday a movie poster might be made, though...

J. What comes to mind is old school cover art for books or pulp fiction magazines. ^^:

This conversation was carried out via DeviantArt, by my friend vanilla-vanilla and myself. Feel free to browse around this conversation and for others which may or may not appear here at a future date. I hope your day/evening is a good one.

conversation/What Students Are Drinking

Image Note: Recycling bin at school for drink cans and bottles. Among other things... apparently.

V. Ha hah... What!? Hey, dudes, who's drinking the hydrogen peroxide!

J. Hahaha, that's what I wanted to know. Along with all the alcohol on campus? Though that probably came from an opening event at the gallery down stairs, it still amused me.

V. Mmm, yes. The new martini? 2 oz gin, 1 oz vermouth and a splash of hydrogen peroxide?

J. It's quiet nice, I had one the other night. It has a wonderfully fizzy after taste that kind of lingers in your mouth like rabies. I was quiet sure that Mr. I.P. Freely over there was going to kill over the first time his date started foaming at the mouth, it was really quiet impressive.

V. Wow! "lingers in your mouth like rabies" OK, whew. I had to cover my mouth to keep from spewing tea all over the monitor...

J. *evil grins* I must admit I was rather proud of myself when that line came out. It just worked wonderfully. Just don't ruin your monitor that would be rather sad.

V. Yup, it was a great moment. Almost makes me wish I had been too slow with the hand-mouth coordination so I could have taken a picture of the spewage to post.

J. That would rather be funny in a sad kind of why, I must admit I was drinking coffee when I read that... tough, luckily I didn't get so bad.

V. Yes!

This conversation was conducted on DeviantArt between my friend vanilla-vanilla and myself krazysidhe. For it and other conversations feel free to hunt around, we hope you've enjoyed today's installment.

I Agree...

"I'm really increasingly disheartened by people pretending that digital technology creates real emotions. I'm tired of people saying, 'I have facebook friends.' I have friends." -- Alexie Sherman

Digital tech. has it's uses and its good things. But it becomes nothing more then a crutch. It creates emotions but really they don't last. I've been part of this digital world for over ten years now. I've thought I had good friends and maybe I did at the time. However, there isn't a single person I talk to regularly online any longer that I knew even a year ago, now.

There are two people that I keep in touch with off and one, but it's casual it doesn't really mean a great deal. Where as the people that I've kept in real life that I've become friends with in person, face to face. Some of them I've known for over ten years. They end up being the people that come and go, those that matter return. Now, perhaps this isn't always the case but it does seem to be a trend.

While networking and such online might be a great thing and have it's benefits. Reaching a diverse group of people,  more people around the world and such. However, much of it is changing, fleeting and unstable. It is just as easy to unfriend someone on facebook as it is to friend. After all what in the end does a friendcount mean when you don't even know anything about most of them, you just add them so it looks like you have lots of friends. It's an illusion, like people putting well known books on their book shelves in public rooms in their houses so that visitors think they've read them.

So much is a facade, perhaps even more so online then it is face to face. While, I use facebook and I find it fun at times and no offense to those of you that I enjoy talking with online and there are a couple of you. But I would rather have friends. This is a dichotomy that I become in creasing aware of the older I get. I used to think my online friends would be there forever. However, there comes a time when things change when those friends you thought would always be on the inside of your screen disappear. People do it in real life to, don't get me wrong. But what I have found is that people in real life come back and those who vanish from the ether rarely return and when they do... it's never the same.

Cherish those friends around you, make they last. Talk to people online be friends. But remember it's the people you can see, you can year and you can touch that really matter. The internet is but a crutch that allows us some measure of safety. It allows us not to be forced into the vulnerable situation of social interaction that can tie our stomach in knots and make us want to throw up. Living is tying yourself up in knots, it is throwing up a little, it is getting hurt and it is reaping the rewards for your nerves. vanishes

conversations/ABCD Soup

V. Nice branches... Poor tree!

J. Makes a nice image against the snow though.

V. It does make a good image. Hope the bigger trunk part has some branches, too...

J. I think it's probably dead, poor little thing. That was all of it there was. It's one of those smaller trees in a fairly dense canopied area, that probably will not make it to maturity because it hast to fight too hard to reach up high enough to get to the sunlight through all of the other trees.

V. Too bad, but, it happens...

J. It does and that is why we have cannibalistic trees because they feed off the decaying bodies of the young that have been spawned by themselves and their neighbors... Now there is an interesting theory for how we might cut down on over population. Follow natures example...

V. Ah, yes. It would work very well... Following natures, example, Jonathan Swift, "A Modest Proposal". Scroll down for example to: A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.

J. *chuckles* It has possibilities, though I suppose most would resort to cats and dogs first. Mmm Swift, I haven't had to delve into that in a long while.

V. Mmm, we could make a 3-meat stew! I'll bet that would sell.

J. Soup of the day ABCD!
A Baby, Cat and Dog Soup.
Just $2.99 A Bowl.

V. Wow! A bowl of 3-meat soup for under $3! Yay!

J. I know. That's what you get when you use cat and dog, though I suppose baby might up the price some...

V. !! Yes! Maybe that's why it's not $2.95...

J. Yes, those special four pennies added onto the end. Little do people know that they are actually the very secret intermediate that adds magic to our soup. We very carefully take those last four penny's and we add them to the tithe that we pay to hell. The one that allows us to add little baby's and defenseless animals to our soup without fearing four our souls. Instead we just put everyone else in jeopardy but FEEDING it to you. Mwahahaha!

V. Oh, wow! I'm seriously laughing all over... I love it! :rose: (Hmm, maybe someday 3-meat soup will appear in a deviation... "For only four cents, we throw in the baby, and you can take the bath-water home!")

J. It's guaranteed to cure all manor of allurements from the common cold to crabs and maybe even aids. Would you like to try some bath water now? Just remember you can not guarantee that your soul will survive in one piece.

V. Ah, yes...

This conversation in all it's glory and others took place over here, between vanilla-vanilla and myself. It has not in any way been edited for grammar or content but left as it originally appeared.

Teleporting and Nose Wiggling

V. The only problem with both of these concerts was the one-hour drive on either end of each concert so, all in all, it was not a very green weekend, and I feel guilty about that, so I'll probably stay around Santa Banana for a while, holding in my carbon emissions.

J. We really must perfect the teleportation device. Or strengthen our minds enough that we can do it with a Ooommm, a blink of the eye and a wiggle of our noses. ^_~

V. Yes! Teleportation! Knowing our universe, however, it would probably be more polluting than oil. Nose-wiggling, however, is probably entropically neutral, so to speak...

J. Physic pollution, everyone popping in and out here and there, falling on top of each other, exploding into each other in mid air. It would be a chaotic mess! And all that nose wiggling, man... people would start developing little twitches and itches that they couldn't control until their noses would start wiggling on their own. Then you'd have people who would start popping in and out of their houses at night while they slept because of their facial twitches. Though I suppose people popping themselves into oblivion is one way to deal with over population.


V. OMG! That really gave me a laugh. Wow, I guess people don't think about how chaotic it would be. Thanks for warning me before I hit the switch to turn on nose-wiggling in your universe!

J. *grins* I guess we'll just have to settle from some other--probably less entertaining--form of chaos.

The entirety of this conversation can be found here, and was carried on by vanilla-vanilla, and myself.

Krazy Conversations

V: Nice... It looks very soft and inviting. Maybe go for a swim...

J: It's warmer in here, come and jump in you know that you want to. That's the water monster whispering to you, telling you that you really do want to go for a swim. And he wants a snack. :)

V: Probably wants to nibble my toes...!

J: AH but the problem with a nibble, is that creak water monsters are deceptive. The creak might not be very deep but they are really very big and long because they smoosh down and spread out. So that in the end a nibble for water monster is actually very large bite for you and me.

V: You mean big like no more toes? or off at the knees? ;-)

J: Rather somewhere in the middle I think. Rather like off at the ankle but you might not realize it right away because he has very sharp teeth. So, you'd probably be trying to walk away and fall over flat on your face because you don't have foot that you thought was there, only it wasn't really there... And then maybe all of you would fall through the ice if you fall hard enough and that's when he gets those nice big meals that keep him fed throughout the year.

V: OK, I'll keep the tootsies out of the water! :-)

J: Just dabble them in the edge while you lean over and put the boot in the deeper water. Then you can get your feet wet and not get your toes munched off--though I can't guarantee your creak monster won't have bigger teeth and take off your whole arm--and it will be all good. Save for the walking back to the car or trail head without two boots, which could prove problematic depending on what type of trail it is.

V: :laughing: Yes, I can see myself limping back down the trail with one boot and one arm...
:-)

This conversation and others can be found on my gallery, Krazysidhe or on V's, Vanilla-Vanilla