time flies...

...when you're having fun, right? well, i have no idea where this night went, and i spent the whole thing sitting in front of my computer working on different variations of a poster. i think i've finally got one together that works and should be easy enough to print out on a standard printer (though on legal-size paper rather than letter-size paper).

it's the poster that corresponds with the flyer/brochure i did last week as a donation. hopefully it will garner some donations from the public (yeah, that's you) for a wonderful lady who's been dealt a losing hand by life. brain cancer is something that nobody should ever have to suffer through, but thankfully she's got a wonderful group of friends who pulled together and organized this raffle. i'm just the geek who's doing the desktop publishing. i've known her almost all my life--she's a friend of the parents.

here is the file. once again, you'll need adobe acrobat reader to open it. feel free to enter in the raffle. there are some amazing baskets, and the small size of the images doesn't really do them justice.

oh, the joy of magnetic poetry

swim together through a chocolate lake
drool after the sordid sweet stare
sing as though it will rain mad music
you have a vision of the winter death
have one lick and leave blood
at the crush of diamond day
from there to the pounding sea
like when i am gone

spring beneath the shadow of an eternity
frantic life in drunk languid dreams
manipulate raw symphonies behind time
heaving beneath the black storm
in an enormous summer moon
together through delicate purple sky
near death & mad whispering rain
and delirious screams through sordid visions
sing of elaborate beauty
and ache at the crush of the knife
swim in the fast flood
& fall weakly to bed
like sleep from when day is gone

*whew!*

right, after a slow week at work, i've actually succeeded in converting the whole site (except for the postcards and pandora's box) to php format. at an average of 160 pages edited per day, it only took me three days. it should be much easier to update now, thankfully. if you feel like perusing almost 500 pictures, please let me know if there are any errors in the photo album pages. always be sure to remove the NOSPAM portion of the email address so it doesn't bounce back to you.

i've also spent a few days working on a charitable project for a friend of the family who has brain cancer. here is the flyer in pdf format. you'll need adobe acrobat reader to open it. the next part of the project is a flyer showing the baskets that aren't pictured in this one, posters, and possibly a web page. and i hope to have it all finished by saturday--wish me luck, eh? it's all for a good cause, though, so if i'm a little short on sleep for the week, it's worth it!

for a limited time only

sometimes i wonder what this world is coming to... well, not sometimes. it's more of a constant thing. but commercials drive me mental. no wonder prescription drugs are so expensive what with the pharmaceutical companies spending all their money on adversiting. ask your doctor if you need this drug. do you want to enhance your sex life? are you going through menopause? we have drugs for everything, but we can't cure cancer. we have drugs to make you virile, but we can't stop the spread of aids.

then, we get into the realm of side effects. may cause dry mouth, vomiting, back pain. don't take this if you have high blood pressure or have a history of respiratory illness. you might be able to run and jump like all the young models in the advertisements, or you might die. here, put these drugs into your body so we can make you feel better about yourself. here, put these drugs into your body, and prepare to spend the next week or so suffering through the myriad side effects that may beset you.

it's time to take a stand against it all. if you're not sick, don't ask your doctor. if it's a natural thing, like menopause or balding, let it happen. really, has our society become so vain that something as timeless as losing hair is worth the research of pharmaceutical companies? what a sad state of affairs we find ourselves in.

another day...

...another dollar. or at least that's supposed to be how it works, right? it's been terribly slow at work recently, but it's given me time to get some reading and website stuff done. in the meantime, i've been listening to the british broadcasting corporation, oregon public broadcasting, national public radio, and a wide variety of music. the war seems to be winding down a bit, but the situation doesn't seem to have improved much. words like "imperialist" are still being referenced in the news when speaking about america, and that's a disturbing trend.

other than that, i'm still working on completing the update of this site. the photo albums are still linked using html rather than php, but i'm slowly getting there. after that, i've got a couple other sites to update and a large amount of writing to do.

remember dr. atkins who took great steps toward revolutionizing dietary practises around the world. he died after slipping on ice and hitting his head on the sidewalk. what a tragic way to die for someone who was so vibrant and healthy.

death and taxes

the only sure things, eh? today is the dreaded day when taxes are due. i heard on the news today that approximately 80% of governmental paperwork is related to taxes. isn't this a bit much? it's about time that the government and the irs shortened the tax code... heck, while we're at it, why don't they honour the original agreement of income taxes? they were instated to assist with funding the war; not the gulf war, not the vietnam war, not even the korean war. income taxes were supposed to go away once the war was over, but they didn't, did they? didn't we leave england in the first place to get away from micromanaging on the part of the kingdom? i could go on for ages on this topic, but suffice it to say that taxes are the bane of the middle and lower classes in this country, and our government (a.k.a. corporate america) doesn't seem to care. one of these days, i'll organize my thoughts and put up a tax rant, but for now, it's just a random entry here.

behind already

right, so the day after i get this thing configured as a blog, i leave for three days. i had a great time at the coast for two and a half days in spite of the intermittent rain. sometimes that's the best thing about the oregon coast: watching the storms come in over the horizon. luckily, it was generally nice during the daylight, and the storms hit in the evening while i was there. the main drawback to clouds and rain on the coast is the lack of decent photo opportunities, especially landscape shots.

north of florence, there's a botanical garden in a marshy area. it's actually pretty cool, and there are literally damp fields of darlingtonia (pitcher plants). of course, i don't actually have any great shots of the pitcher plants, so you'll have to be satisfied with this shot of a flowering skunk cabbage plant.

i certainly need to find more time to spend at the coast. maybe this summer i'll be able to get some decent shots with decent colour--the blue-green hue of the waves just before they break is amazing in the right light. eventually i'll get it spot on, and i'll put a better pic up here, but until that day, i'll just stick with the thumbnail size.

on a different note, i'm thinking about work tonight and realizing that i've got nothing to do for quite a few hours. i just need to figure out if i can get a few hours of sleep so i don't pass out in front of the scope in the wee hours of the morning. so here goes... ciao.

it's alive!!

after much editing and rearranging, i've updated a good portion of this site to run using pMachine, however, there may still be glitches here and there. please let me know if you find any errors or pages that don't load by clicking on the "contact webmaster" link to the left. be sure to remove NOSPAM from the email address before you try sending or it'll bounce back to you.

thanks a million, and enjoy the new site!

and so it begins...

...the end of the world as we know it. the mock turtle just configured a blog on her site. i've been working on it for about 18 hours now, with about 6 hours taken out to sleep briefly, and i've almost got it to a point where everything works. i tend to try to make things harder than they need to be, and that's why it took me so long to figure out how to get it configured the way i wanted. in the meantime, i've been deleting junk mail, listening to a wide variety of music, and thinking about all the other things i should be doing around the house. this, however, is much more fun than putting away laundry, cleaning out the truck, or organizing the various piles of papers around the living room. i've got to get some of it done, though, or i'll feel guilty when i leave for the weekend to visit the coast. maybe i'll have some pics to put up here eventually. so, right now, i'm kinda rambling, so i should shut up... in a bit. the software i'm using for this blog is called pMachine, and it's really quite easy to set up and use. i'm just a freak who, as i said before, tries to make things out to be much harder than they are in reality. so here you are, reading my blog... feel free to check out the rest of the site. personally i recommend the photo albums and the rants.

and here, for your reading pleasure, are a couple poems written with magnetic poetry.

down between pomp and plague
we protest such wicked circumstances
that come so easy
as deep and mad as March.
neither discretion nor toil shall smooth your morrow.

alas evening
yonder night
full dark
what tempest
became morning