Font

 Horizontal Gradiant (too difficult)

No Gradient (easy)

Vertical Mexican Flag Gradient (easy)

Lost in Space and also lost in time. Both. Time and space. But he's saved magically because in this movie nothing changes.

Smooth Horizontal Mexican Flag (too difficult)

I'm gathering material to paint the name of the van on my van. It seems contradictory to use the Mexican flag colors on a word that sort of plundered the country that would become Mexico, but it's also a celebration of the culture and history and present. I've got the material for a simple Gold with white outline. I want to paint it on the hood in acrylic or enamel. I can always paint the colors of Guatemalan flag later but the problem is that the blue is the same color as the hood. When faced with a choice between two unconventional options I usually choose the most unconventional, which would be the Mexican flag.

Artistic Sample From Big Bend

    
I'd be lying if I said this wasn't motivated a little by my desire to avoid being kidnapped, tortured, burned, pulverized, stuffed in a trash bag and then thrown in a river.

Anchors Aweigh

Chas. Zimmermann wrote it in 1906 and the lyrics are revised periodically.

This is in honor of American Veterans Day. The song is from the Naval academy and isn't an official Navy song. In fact, it's most closely associated with the Army/Navy football game and the lyrics I have in my sheet music are specifically for the football game. This has a melody range that is beyond my ability so I'll play the melody on the piano and let you imagine the words.

Who doesn't love Negro Spirituals?

Verse 1
Stand Navy down the field, sails set to the sky.
We'll never change our course, so Army you steer shy-y-y-y.
Roll up the score, Navy, Anchors Aweigh.
Sail Navy down the field and sink the Army, sink the Army Grey.

This edition printed in 1930.

 I was in the Merchant Marines back when my knees did not pop when I walked. It was in the oil field of the Gulf of Mexico and technically not a war zone but putting a Yankee vegetarian Hippie on a boat full of Louisiana Swampers is not much different than a war. Every day, every minute, was a fight for survival. We didn't sing this song but every night at 4am before the false dawn I would stand on the salty deck and vow to survive the day at whatever the cost.

Slim

Lost in Space and also lost in time. Both. Time and space. But he's saved magically because in this movie nothing changes.

I'd give my left hand to have his right hand. Slim Gaillard is featured in an S.F. scene of Kerouac's On The Road. Dean loves him sweating and smiling, the scene is like a descending meteor, everyone would die before their time. Many people are talented and many people are charming and when you put them together you end up with either Sammy Davis jr. or Slim Gaillard.

Conservative Madman Claims Guns Are Only Dangerous Once They Are Stolen

After leaning on the tired "Guns don't kill people, people kill people," rhetoric for decades one conservative pundit suddenly became a babbling bleeding-heart liberal after California passed Prop 47 in the recent election. The proposition, which Conservative Newt Gingrich supports and Democrat Diane Feinstein opposes, reduces certain "non-serious and non-violent felonies" to misdemeanors and provides provisions for re-sentencing those in prison for the now reduced felonies.

This proposition is the desperate attempt by California to face reality. It spends more than $62,000 a year for every one of the 136,000 prisoners, (total=$8,432,000,000 making CA license plates the most expensive pieces of numbered tin in history) but only $9,200 for every K-12 student.* The Bear Flag state has built 22 prisons in the last 30 years and only one public university.** It's fiscal managers must live in a constant drug induced stupor if they think investing in prisoner comforts is going to pay off but Nixon and Reagan and Bush Sr. had the brilliant strategy of saying, "We'll build more prisons." during the 80s. True to their word, they built more prisons and watched in horror as the prisons were filled faster than seats at a monster truck show.

Cholula

Once Upon A Time

There are so many good pictures of Cholula on the internet that actually visiting the place in person was sort of anticlimactic. The Instagram-doctored pictures are actually better than my own eyes. They are like movie spoilers for the brain. This is the danger of researching places before traveling. I love being unaware, like walking into that Franciscan Monastery in Huaquechula. I'd never heard of it or seen a picture. It was my own discovery. I only went there for the Dia De Los Muertos activities. Cholula is famous for the biggest pyramid in the New World and I felt like the Pakistani trinket salesmen had occupied it long before me.